According to the StatCounter, Linux on the desktop has continued to rise and remains above 4%, with this being the healthiest it's ever looked on the desktop.
  •  peanuts4life   ( @peanuts4life@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
    127•3 months ago

    The attrition is slow, but every user lost to Linux is likely lost forever. After a year or so of totally free software, who is going to build a new windows compatible PC, buy a Windows 11 license, and pay for subscription service just to do word processing, or play a few incompatible games?

    Windows completely overestimates people’s willingness to throw out their laptop or PC just to get a new OS paintjob. For every person who does it, another one will leave their ecosystem forever.

    •  Senseless   ( @Senseless@feddit.de ) 
      19•3 months ago

      I think I didn’t buy a Windows license ever. Got Win 7 free from my college and always could upgrade for free to the next version. I never used MS Office, mostly did use the Google suite. Games were the only thing that kept me, especially since I got more privacy continuous over the past few years.

      I’m currently dual booting Win 11 and Linux mint as a test phase. Actually just running windows for the proprietary phone client I need for work. Otherwise I’m newly exclusively using LM right now. Though I might make the switch to EndeavourOS for it’s rolling release approach and AUR.

      Only thing I really hate is that there are some proprietary software like ICUE, L-Connect a proper scanning software for my printer including OCR (there is a version for Linux but it doesn’t include OCR) or shitty driver support for my graphics card. But none of those are issues coming from Linux itself but rather from the lack of support from the developers. Also, I love DLSS and Ray tracing but seriously… fuck Nvidia.

      •  BCsven   ( @BCsven@lemmy.ca ) 
        3•3 months ago

        Unless its corporate, because then you are paying for windows separate from the PC, and user based licensing for server access, and subscription fees for office. and EOS W10 fees coming

    •  poinck   ( @poinck@lemm.ee ) 
      6•3 months ago

      I know at least one person who switched back to Windows but claimed there was no choice. Maybe the people arround that person making the switch to Linux initially does matter. And if they are (still) Windows users, it can happen at the first sign of trouble; especially when they are stubborn Windows users.

      Guys, there are people out there Windows is the only OS they want to use despite all the problems.

  •  я не из калининграда   ( @imnotfromkaliningrad@lemmy.ml ) 
    88•3 months ago

    i honestly just wanna express my gratitude to all the people who made linux what it is today over the last decades, the experience is incomparable to the one i had when first installing debian in 2007. i wish i were more skilled in order to meaningfully give back to this community.

    and to all the newbies: thanks for joining our ranks! please dont be scared by the rather elitist attitude that some users display. we secretly all love you!

  •  Jo Miran   ( @JoMiran@lemmy.ml ) 
    42•3 months ago

    At this point I use Linux for everything except my music production hobby (Mac for that) and even then I use Renoise and BitWig on Linux. I’ve been on Linux since 1996 but I haven’t been 100% Linux until the past two years.

    •  HouseWolf   ( @HouseWolf@lemm.ee ) English
      7•3 months ago

      I’m a newbie bedroom music producer but I’ve actually had more luck with my audio setup on Linux than I did on Windows 10.

      I’m using an older Scarlet 2i2 to record guitar and back on Windows I was always having driver issues or Windows randomly resetting the sample rate making my DAW freak out at me.

      On Linux it just works right away without me needing to download or tweak anything. Only part of my setup that needed tweaking was using yabridge for a few Windows VSTs.

      •  Jo Miran   ( @JoMiran@lemmy.ml ) 
        3•3 months ago

        If you are mostly recording your guitar play and aren’t using a lot of plugins, then Linux is a great solution. I highly recommend Bitwig as a DAW on Linux. If you’re on a tight budget, Reaper is also a great solution on Linux. It didn’t vibe with me (Bitwig is my favorite DAW), but a lot of people love it. I hear that the Reaper community is very active and inviting and the DAW is very customizable.

    •  IsoSpandy   ( @IsoSpandy@lemm.ee ) 
      6•3 months ago

      Sorry for hijacking this beautiful conversation you talented gentlemen are having, but can help me out?

      I wanted to learn electronic music creation. I learnt very briefly how fl studio works, and then got busy due to my workload. Now I want to give it a go again. I heard llms is good for Linux, but I don’t understand how to get various instrument samples like fl studio. How do I set it all up? Can you point me to any good resources. I am also not committed to lmms and am open to suggestions.

      •  Jo Miran   ( @JoMiran@lemmy.ml ) 
        8•3 months ago

        I cannot comment on LLMs for music generation but, if you are starting from scratch, there are a few methods that I think are interesting.

        • Sequencer/Groovebox: Hardware like the Elektron Digitakt and Polyend Play+ use the “piano roll” style generation that you find in most DAWs. How you import and edit samples, then sequence them in the piano roll, varies from one to the other. Fortunately, you can find a lot of video tutorials for most DAWs and hardware based sequencers on YouTube.
        • Music Trackers: Whether it is a hardware tracker like the Polyend Tracker or the M8, or a software tracker like Renoise, this type of sample edit and sequencing really lends itself to electronic music. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube.
        • Samplers: Here you have hardware like the Roland SP404 MKii, the MPC One, and the Teenage Engineering EP133 KO II and DAWs like Native Instruments Maschine (also requires Maschine hardware). If you have a tablet, check out Koala Sampler. It might be the best $5 you’ll spend this year.

        In my opinion, trackers are an extremely fast and powerful way to create electronic music. The main complaint people have is the learning curve since almost everything else uses the “piano roll” method. Since you are starting from scratch, that complaint doesn’t really apply because no matter what you select, you’ll have to learn from zero.

    •  myster0n   ( @myster0n@feddit.nl ) 
      4•3 months ago

      I have, over the years, spent quite some money on (windows) VSTs. I’ve tried in the past to get them running on Linux, but with no success : even when the installer worked fine in wine, the tools used to get the VSTs to run using bitwig either introduced too much lag, or the sound was stuttering. Have you had some more success and if so, can you give me some pointers?

      •  bstix   ( @bstix@feddit.dk ) English
        3•3 months ago

        What he said is that he does the majority of his hobby on a Mac, but also installed music apps on Linux.

        Apple managed to grab a good chunk of the market by making some well-functioning creative apps early on, but I’m not sure if they really have any advantage over Windows anymore.

        Music production on Linux is still somewhat behind, due to limited software. People get paid for making that stuff on other platforms, so Linux developers are scarce.

        Some of it is also moving to tablets and phones these days, so the kind of person to buy a Mac only for easy music production will probably just get a dongle for their iPad.

        You’ll still need a pc/mac for the full studio experience. Not because of software, but because its difficult to rig an entire music studio into a touchscreen with a single usb port. I mean, sure it’s possible, but you don’t want to. Latency, multiple monitors and a shit load of controllers make it physically impossible unreliable.

        On the bright side for Linux, music production is actually very low demanding, so it makes perfect sense to run an old laptop with a low spec distro and still have the same options as the state-of-the-art rig. Young starving artists will probably go that way instead of buying Mac.

        •  fuckwit_mcbumcrumble   ( @fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
          4•3 months ago

          Music production on Linux is still somewhat behind, due to limited software.

          Audio support has historically been dogshit, and still to this day can be incredibly finicky. Audio latency has also typically been by far the best on Mac OS. But I think lately with Linux with the exact right combination of hardware and software it can be better. Can.

          https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1c923fvcwyla1.jpg

        •  Norah - She/They   ( @princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
          3•3 months ago

          Apple didn’t make Logic originally, they bought it. Same with Final Cut. This is also a pretty short-sighted take on the history of Macs and creative apps which actually stretches back to early 90s. Windows was originally pretty terrible with all kinds of multimedia and it wasn’t until XP that they finally really even started trying.

          •  bstix   ( @bstix@feddit.dk ) English
            2•3 months ago

            Of course it’s brief. Lots of stuff happened, but saying that XP was the first is also wrong. Adobe Audition used to be a freeware program for Win95 called CoolEdit… in the 30+years that Adobe has owned it, they have only added VST effects…

            As of today, you can make music on any kind of hardware, even obscure handheld devices from before smartphones, and they’ll perform better than the original Logic. There’s nothing technical setting Apple’s “industry standard” apart from freeware these days.

  •  toastal   ( @toastal@lemmy.ml ) 
    28•3 months ago

    What’s odd to me is the cultural zeitgeist has moved to folks being aware that Microsoft (& Google & Apple) is collecting data on them to being the butt of jokes, yet those folks aren’t adopting an alternatives. With over a decade on Linux I’m now pretty out of touch with the opposite feeling. I guess the closest analog I have is not being able to realistically leave Android behind, but that is more hardware than software (banking app already don’t let you root or otherwise flash your device so I have given up hope in trying with them).

    •  Domi   ( @domi@lemmy.secnd.me ) 
      4•3 months ago

      banking app already don’t let you root or otherwise flash your device so I have given up hope in trying with them

      You can get around that pretty easily by fooling SafetyNet / Play Integrity and hiding root from those apps. My phones have all been rooted for years and I never had issues with banking apps. I don’t even run any google services anymore and the apps I use are fine with that.

      •  toastal   ( @toastal@lemmy.ml ) 
        2•2 months ago

        Previous phone it worked up until it didn’t. New phone I left unrooted since that was the error they gave me. Now without the root/jailbreak error, I get a useless generic error & the app crashes. I’ve been too lazy to root it just choosing alternative payment methods.

    •  reksas   ( @reksas@sopuli.xyz ) 
      3•2 months ago

      Majority of people just dont care about being spied upon unless it directly affects them somehow, at which point its too late for that person. But others having data on you wont likely directly affect you at the moment so not enough people get burned by it for general attitude to change. Smart people understand that all this can very easily change and prepare by not allowing all of their information be available for questionable people to use. Others make fun of them for this and call them crazy until one day they suddenly aren’t so crazy any more.

      •  toastal   ( @toastal@lemmy.ml ) 
        4•2 months ago

        They actually do care tho about the tracking—if they weren’t privacy wouldn’t be included in marketing like it is now. They are just more willing to accept it as a fact of life rather than dealing with it (or don’t know that they can do something or how to start).

        We should make this easier for folks ’cause every email I send from a non-data-collection host usually ends up on a Google or Microsoft server, etc. Every silly Discord chatroom you join, or Facebook page you like has the same ramifications.

      •  MonkeMischief   ( @MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ) 
        2•2 months ago

        I think we need to do some really difficult investigations that essentially can show concrete proof of how this affects people:

        "See you were looking up vacations and insurance right? Well you signed up to your car’s connected service, you have an Alexa in your house, and a smart TV and a fridge all talking to each other…and they all worked together to put together a profile of how much you make and how old you are and everything else…

        …so your neighbor looked up the same insurance and vacations and is paying about $200 less for the exact same of each, because they use AdBlock and don’t allow spy devices in their house."

        And then finish with the real kicker:

        “I know you didn’t ask to participate, but we just scraped all this information about you off the Internet and didn’t even need to ask you. We had to ask your neighbor to participate though.”

  •  st3ph3n   ( @st3ph3n@midwest.social ) English
    23•3 months ago

    Now that gaming is effectively a solved problem thanks to Proton, Adobe Lightroom is just about the only thing keeping my desktop PC on Windows. My laptop is already running Linux. I’ve tried the FOSS alternatives but none of them fits my workflow like Lightroom. This is a me problem more so than a problem with any of these pieces of software.

    •  HouseWolf   ( @HouseWolf@lemm.ee ) English
      44•3 months ago

      Windows 11 got quite a few people to look into trying Linux

      I personally didn’t think Win11 was that big of a downgrade over Win10, But I also didn’t like 10 to begin with so I didn’t need much convincing.

    •  melpomenesclevage   ( @melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee ) 
      9•3 months ago

      Proton making Linux better for gaming, which was the biggest excuse for holdouts. Steam deck showing you could not only game on Linux, but do so while sitting in a tree, with long term support implied by show of confidence from a large corporation.

      Windows steepened its enshittification spiral.

      The pandemic put a lot of people in a more experimental space, and they tried a lot of shit. And a lot of people picked up new skills. Including Linux 101.

      And people saw authority in general start failing in a big ways. A lot of people started questioning shit. Including corporate hegemonies.

    •  qjkxbmwvz   ( @qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website ) 
      7•3 months ago

      Pandemic lockdown maybe? Everyone got bored a few months into 2020. By 2021 they finally figured out their wifi drivers 🤷

      (I’m joking, I haven’t seriously struggled with wifi for a long time. I use Debian btw.)

      •  GreatDong3000   ( @GreatDong3000@lemm.ee ) 
        3•3 months ago

        I started using Linux in 2021 never had any problems with drivers for anything. Debian also. It was just a pain in the ass to install until I figured out I had to download the iso with non free drivers or whatever. Glad they made this easier for Debian 12.

        •  Baku   ( @Baku@aussie.zone ) English
          2•3 months ago

          Now that I think about it, I actually first used Linux in 2021 too. For me it was because the laptop I had shipped with a HDD that was known for being prone to vibration failure, so while waiting for the warranty request to be approved I was running a persistent Ubuntu live USB

  •  golden_zealot   ( @golden_zealot@lemmy.ml ) English
    19•3 months ago

    I bought Windows 11 early on so I’m still using it to justify the purchase on my desktop, but I moved my OEM licensed laptop over to Debian a few months ago.

    Can confirm that as soon as Windows 11 is no longer supported or it gets slightly more ass, I’ll be moving my desktop over to Debian or Arch or something as well.

    With the advent of gaming becoming so much more accessible on linux either through native support or through something like proton, I am very hard pressed to find any reason to stay.

    •  rottingleaf   ( @rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ) 
      6•2 months ago

      In Russian it’s called Вендекапец and is a bit like second coming.

      Maybe it’s not happening yet, but the bigger share it has, the faster it’ll grow.

      And MS and Apple have only themselves to blame.

      20 years ago, when the first Linux offensive happened, so to say, with Mandrake and a wave of Linux-native games and proprietary products, and IBM support, people would criticize Linux for having inconsistent chaotic UIs and experience. I was a Windows-only kid, so this is retrospective and people can correct me.

      Not sure if anybody remembers, but then you could find most of Windows’ important settings in one place, and it looked so polished and patient and relaxing, both 2000 and XP.

      Mac OS X was all about toys and shiny colors, but there was also the spirit of it being very polished and consistent and light and fresh.

      So - Linux can still be very usable. While both MacOS and Windows even look cheap, I wonder how they managed to achieve that. Even Gnome doesn’t look cheap despite desperately trying to imitate MacOS. Not even speaking about ergonomics.

  •  dwt   ( @dwt@feddit.de ) 
    13•3 months ago

    There is the theory, that to convince everyone of something, you have to invest very hard work to convince 4% of the populace of what you are doing is right. After that, the rest will learn to know of this by themselves.

    Hopefully this is similar

    •  MrShankles   ( @MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
      16•3 months ago

      I work in a very large hospital. I left for 3 years and just came back. When I went to open a document at work, it opened in Libre Office. I was pretty surprised that they ditched Microsoft Office for Libre. Makes financial sense to me, especially because most of our use-cases are simply opening and reading a document or slideshow. But I was still surprised they made that switch, and I doubt half of the employees honestly even notice that much

      Now, they still run Windows Desktops, and I doubt that would ever switch in my lifetime. So no linux for us. But still pleasantly surprised at the step forward

        •  MrShankles   ( @MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
          5•3 months ago

          Probably not honestly, but switching to Libre Office was probably relatively easy and saves way more than it cost to pay IT to get it running on the network.

          But switching the desktop environment for the entire hospital system, I could see being costly (in labor costs). Plus, I’m not sure that the EMR (Epic) would play nice, or any of the other various critical programs they use. Definitely a much different (and probably difficult) task to pull off smoothly, compared to switching Office for Libre

            •  MrShankles   ( @MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
              1•3 months ago

              I think it really could be, if administration could understand the limitations of the IT side. And/or the corporate/entity cared to spend the money to make it happen (Like re-hiring the IT department so that everyone was on the same page).

              I wish it could, but even I wouldn’t think that it would be financially efficient to try and “fix” what already works. And Epic is just one of the critical programs… there’s a lot of in-between.

              If it were my hospital to run; I’d wanna test-run linux desktop in some capacity, because I bet it could be made to work better/cheaper. But it’s one of the most extensive hospitals in the state, with a LOT of everyone around using their services in some capacity. I can’t imagine them shelling out the extra capital to “decide” if there would be “long-term gains”. It’s not financially smart “short-term”, even if financially better "long-term.

              But switching to Libre Office? I was surprised. Maybe one day we’ll get there

              •  melpomenesclevage   ( @melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee ) 
                1•2 months ago

                epic is one of the critical programs

                Okay but they… It… At least the back end works on Linux? Or did twenty two years ago, since before some of your younger staff were probably born, according to the first result of my single web search? I think the front end does too? You know computers with different operating systems can talk to each other, right? Yeah you should be sure, and that’s why you set up a test computer in a back room somewhere to be absolutely personally sure.

                I understand that its not your decision, I, um, can’t refute that part (I’d like to argue it though? For fun?)

                Maybe the entire regime of ‘ownership’ especially of such an important public utility so many people rely on, like a fucking hospital cannot, in real terms, be privately owned? It is the property of the people, of the community it is in, and as such, and as that it is the year of the Linux desktop, you should be conducting a covert assassination campaign against windows partisans on the IT staff and gradually reclaiming that department for the people while making absolutely no other changes to things like billing or scheduling or policy regarding unhoused patients.

                Then, when the unbelievers are purged, quietly install Linux with cinnamon on people’s computers, until it has finished, and you are victorious. Reap the software licensing fees you would have paid to Microsoft and 5% efficiency gains in one hospital to jump start the revolution from there. Use it to build a concentration camp for landlords, then…

                •  MrShankles   ( @MrShankles@reddthat.com ) 
                  1•2 months ago

                  Use it to build a concentration camp for landlords, then…

                  Lol, I love the gumption

                  I unfortunately don’t work IT in any capacity (it’s a hobby of mine), and have never even seen an IT personnel from work, in person. But I also work nights as a nurse (direct patient care), so it’s not really in my “scope of practice” to have much of a say. But one can still dream