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From my experience, an average user goes to a local "wallmart" and buys wharever laptop they like visually. It has Windows pre-installed. They just use it.
It's already a big step forward if they install Chrome instead of Edge. If they install Firefox or LibreOffice, they are a highly advanced average user.
Do you think anyone would care to change the OS? There should hapoe something really big for it to happen.
Won't be like that much longer. Windows continues to become worse, Linux (desktop) is on a steep upwards trend. I've been using desktop Linux since 1998 and desktop Linux has always been at or around 1% market share, for 15-20 years it was just flat basically, which tells the story that only geeks and nerds used it, which is the story that everyone's familiar with.
But these days? It's approaching 5%, and most of that climb was just in the recent 5 years. That's insane. At the same time, Windows continues regressing from about 95% market share in 2009 or so to something like 70% these days. And this tells the story that people are growing increasingly fed up with Windows (and rightfully so).
In all other areas, Linux is already the dominant OS. It dominates servers, supercomputers, mobiles and embedded systems. Since Microsoft doesn't appear to get their sh!t together, it'll soon dominate the desktop as well.
It feels like most people here are only reacting to the title. If you actually look at the article, it talks about commonly mentioned advantages and examples of Linux.
It's really not that interesting to me as an article, but from scrolling through some others there might be more interesting stuff here. Or am I missing something?
No, I read the same article as you did. The title is over the top. At least the first sentence clarifies it, it's just "What is Linux?"
And I guess at this point everyone heard about Linux. At least here on Lemmy, I suppose. We don't really need to expain this underneath a clickbaity title.
I think it's an interesting question, why people predominantly use Windows, out of all of the (better) opportunities. But I guess we also know the answer to that: Prejudice, lack of education and just being familiar with it. If new computers came with a free operating system preconfigured, and people were taught in school how to write their letters with LibreOffice and fix their small computer woes within Linux, I guess that'd own the major market share on desktop. But that's not how it is.
I think things are changing. Gaming got better during the last few years. You can do all the office tasks at ease for quite some time now. Programming is way easier on Linux and it's already the target platform for lots of applications, so you might as well use it while developing, even if you don't like it. Linux is like 33 years old at this point and rock solid, let aside the usual minor issues with everything where computers are involved... And people seem to be noticing. Linux is on the rise, judging by the numbers. Meanwhile Windows gets worse and filled with advertisements and silly things. But we still have the same chicken and egg problem going. Most commercial programs are exclusive to Windows. People still are familiar with that operating systems. And last time I visited a computer store, the machines still all came with Win 11. Change is tough and takes a deliberate effort to get away from Windows, if that's someones desire in the first place.
People use what they use at work, because they want to use what they know, and most people don't care enough to learn to use use two different OSes.
Companies still use Windows because most companies still use Windows, and compatibility is important. And, Microsoft is slick, with professional and aggressive salespeople. And it's "safe", and the people making these decisions are old fucks who are used to Windows because that's what they've always used through their careers.
Some people use Macs at home, and are also high enough level at their company to get Apples approved as a supported product by IT, but this goes back to point #1: people prefer to use only one OS both at work and at home. When execs do get Macs approved, they tend to get approved only for management, because IT groups want to really only support one OS, and they want to hire as few people who can provide support for both OSes.
Linux doesn't even play into this game. Few executives are going to force IT to support it, and so the window of Linux desktop being an option for the drones is limited. And nobody's going to make Linux the only option. And so, most people are never going to be motivated to use Linux at home for the reason that they use it at work.
It's a different world in software development organizations, where a lot off these pressures are different, and you find more Linux, and Linux at home, and people willing to know their way around multiple OSes. But that's an edge case: most of the time the pressures of status quo hold sway.
I doubt that's a major factor. Generally you don't use some SAP or sales software at work and then go ahead and say "I want the task bar at my gaming computer at home to have the same color and menu layout". And in bigger companies the machines are pretty locked down. You can't fix the printer yourself. And thus there is no knowledge to be learned that you can take home... That's just the reason why people pay for Microsoft Office at home. Because of familiarity. But people also use the Apple software, LibreOffice or some cloud solution like Google Docs. It's split, even with - we use XY at work.
And management... I guess they do whatever they want anyways. I often don't see solid reasoning behind their decisions. I've seen it the other way round. Sometimes THEY (management people) want to implement something at work that they're familiar with from home. And it takes like 3 days of convincing that this isn't made for commercial purposes and will make everyone's day worse and generally be a bad idea... Also there is lots of lobbyism and incompetence at work. Large software companies have money to advertise. Have people at the right places. And they're successful with that. And we have the chicken and egg problem again. They've been using Windows. Their suppliers write software for their Windows. And that makes them stick with it. With some exceptions, of course. It's hard to change the infrastructure at companies anyways. All the infrastructure and applications are entangled and also the IT people generally only know one ecosystem. That makes it hard to change any one piece in the puzzle on its own. And it's also the reason why some companies still rely on obscure 30 years old software that no one is able to understand or maintain. Nobody thinks that's healthy. However, it's part of daily business for IT people.
I'm sure there are a lot of complex reasons. Frankly, I don't really care why other people don't use Linux, I use it. Exclusively.
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Uh… pretty much everyone is except for end-users. Even then we’ve got Android and other Linux-based phone operating systems, and let’s not forget that Apple devices are UNIX-based (which in my mind is way different than Linux, but c’mon, it’s essentially the same concept in the end with tons of varying compatibility between the two).
Ease of use when switching over. The average person just wants a personal computer to work. If they are using or interacting with new technology they will learn that new thing (we saw this with smart phones). If they are interacting with technology they are already nominally used to they want familiarity.
As someone who uses both Linux and Windows, I'm gonna say that going from windows to Linux has a bar to entry as far as it being intuitive that a lot of people just are not going to bother with.
It does not help that a lot of vocal Linux users pretend they are superior in every way to those who use anything else.
Most people grew up using windows. Familiarity has a huge part. Why isn't everyone using macos?
Very different questions though. Linux offers massive and plentiful advantages over both of those.
I am not disagreeing with the familiarity idea, though; change terrifies most people.
A lot of people just need to get shit done and it's easier to just use the tool they know than to relearn how to use a computer.
I think relearn how to use a computer is a real stretch. Like colossal. Plenty of distros and DEs make it even easier than Windows, can look exactly like either, and are far less accident prone.
I don't think it's a stretch. I've been using both for >15-20 years.
Lots of people don't even know how to install windows. While linux is easier to install IMO (and has been for years) I'd say a significant amount of the population doesn't even know how to control computer boot behaviour. Linux is not preinstalled on a significant amount of computers due to Microsoft's monopoly on the PC market. After you get past this, everything looks different. SameButDifferent.gif.
KDE Plasma for example, sure it looks close at a glance but the icon is different for the menu. This is enough to trip up some. Dolphin looks similar but behaves a bit differently than Explorer. "I want to install adobe photoshop. Hey, why can't I open this installer?" - how software is managed on Linux is quite a bit different since windows still doesn't really have a good package management method.
Then hardware compatibility, distro choice, and stability. I've been running nvidia for years and I cannot tell you how many times I've rebooted my various systems over the years after patching it and I'm greeted by a shell and an error message. Good luck, majority of the population.
I can't tell you the amount of hours I've burned trying to fix my GUI using a spare computer or my cell phone to look up error messages.
Of course, for all those instances there are computers that work just absolutely flawlessly. But the software and DEs all still have some of a learning curve.
That all said, most people will just see the firefox icon and be like "durr - internet!"
Btw: Linux use on the desktop seems to be on a steep rise. StatsCounter claims 4.5% market share now. And I see lots of people complaining about what Microsoft does lately. Like the advertisements, fake news in the menu. And wanting to take screenshots every few seconds. People seem to start questioning things.
And I mean it's correct that this is a desktop computer thing. If you own a smartphone, tablet, internet wifi router, embedded (smarthome) device, modern car, chances are you're already use Linux and don't even know. And you'll likely be talking to Linux servers and network infrastructure all day if you're using the internet. And I guess quite a few people are using internet services in 2024...