This is just based on my personal experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.
Rather than gaining ground from the wider population, I see the recent rise in Linux usage as coming from a pool of “interested users” who have in one way or the other, had some prior exposure and thus interest in Linux. These people have already been interested in making the jump, but have been held back in one way or the other.
This shouldn’t be taken as discounting the recent advances amongst Linux distributions, however. Personally, the reason why I’ve made the jump is two-fold: dissatisfaction with Windows, and the advances in Linux itself that have made the jump far less intimidating than ever before. Not being a gamer, however, advances in Proton was only seen as a bonus, though a very welcome one.
Only one other person in my current friend group daily-drive Linux, and like me, they already have had experience with it beforehand. There are some other people I know of who have used Linux, but still, they all have had prior experience from school or work. For everyone else I know of, if they’ve even heard of Linux, they think of it as “for advanced users” and as one contact put it “way above my pay grade”. Unfortunately, in so far as personal experience goes, I don’t have confidence Linux will be shedding that image anytime soon.
As for the Steam Deck, I am guessing it’d be similar (with a lot of caveats) to how people see Android. It’d be seen as a separate thing, and not occupy the same mental space as “desktop Linux”. For one, it being a hand-held system will reinforce that difference, and people aren’t as willing to tinker about with their handhelds as people are with their desktop systems. Steam Deck’s OS might as well be BSD or even Temple OS as far as the ordinary user is concerned. I am hoping I am wrong here, however, as interoperability might make a difference here: if people can install and use their desktop programs to their Steam Decks in as much the same ease as installing an Android app in their phones, then perhaps the choice of OS here will make an impression on the users and not just the tinkerers.
Despite saying all that, however, I still think Linux is undergoing a renaissance. There’s quite a lot of improvements going on even as we speak. Usability, in a very general sense, like being able to daily-drive Linux without being hampered by a lot of issues, is way better than it was when I first used a Linux machine in a school computer laboratory close to twenty years ago. Advances like this is starting to pull people who are curious, interested, and already leaning towards making the jump—and if this trend continues, will lead more people into using Linux, leading to more people contributing towards advances, and so on.
I jumped all in least December just to get away from Windows. I went Arch because I like a challenge and I thought it would fast track learning how to Linux. I work IT so I’m skilled with Windows and software in general. Once I got it setup, which took a while, I haven’t had too many issues, or at least not many more than I had with Windows. Most of them have been related to hibernation, which I just disabled, and Wayland with Nvidia. It struggles remembering positions when I disable and re-enable monitors, since I use the same station for work. Other than that, it runs so much better than better, faster, and more efficient than Windows.
If you want to be a power user, the sky is the limit to what you can do, or go with a stable, user friendlier distro like Ubuntu or Mint, where the out of box experience is fairly intuitive. If Linux shipped stock on laptops, most people would assume Windows got different and be none the wiser. Not having native MS Office apps is also going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people.
I’ve switched to Linux as my daily driver sometime late 2019, and initially went with Manjaro (with XFCE, because I was using an ancient laptop back then) after it was recommended to me. The installation and set-up process was pretty quick and painless.
When I got my current desktop, I stayed with Manjaro. However, I got some problems with my NVIDIA video card’s drivers. Proprietary support for it was dropped shortly after I got my system. Nouveau was decent. I can use my system at the very least, but gaming was a lot iffy. I didn’t mind since I don’t really do gaming, however. Since then, I’ve moved on to Arch, btw. Also since then, I’ve got an AMD card. Neither of them gave me much problems. A lot of my problems with Arch deal with the changes I’ve made to my configuration.
This is basically my Linux experience: when it works, which is 90% of the time, it’s excellent. When I do have some problems, 90% of the time (9% overall), I can get by with a few internet searches. That remaining 10% of the time (so, 1% overall), I feel that I’m just too smooth-brained to resolve it, and even attempting to resolve it seems to be a foolish errand.
While lot of help is out there online, I don’t appreciate the elitist tone of some of the more Arch-specific fora—they’re helpful, but I’ll never want to put myself to the position of asking those people for help, not with how newbs are treated. That is basically why I said earlier that I have no confidence that Linux will soon be able to shed its “for advanced users” image. Newbs to Linux don’t have the knowledge to “properly ask questions” required by a lot of those online fora. IMO, they only resort to asking questions online when they’re knee-deep in shit and are desperate for an answer. Being faced with an “elitist RTFM attitude” when one’s already desperate for help doesn’t alleviate that “Linux is too hard for me” image.
So, yeah, there’s that.
90% of the time, Linux works swimmingly fine. 9% of the time, some problems might arise, but an online search (Arch Wiki is very helpful in this regard) and digging around some fora would resolve it. 1% of the time is where you’d find yourself wondering if you’re smart enough for Linux. Unfortunately, it only takes a handful of (second-hand) bad interactions (thread closed with no answers, being told to RTFM, being told that the query is too vague without any helpful nudge towards a refinement of the query, etc.) to sour a user’s impression of Linux as a whole.
I must admit that newbs not knowing how to ask questions isn’t a problem exclusive to Linux alone. However, Windows and even Mac have the luxury of larger user numbers, and more importantly, paid staff to address user queries. With Linux, as a rule, the ones answering user questions are but other users volunteering their time and effort to answer questions. It’s understandable that facing the same malformed question again and again is infuriating. However, I think it takes time and effort to be rude. IMO, it’s just better to walk away from a possible unpleasant interaction. Of course, this wouldn’t help the user at all, but I’d rather see a thread with no replies than someone telling me to shut up and read the fucking manual. Perhaps there’d be someone more helpful who’d step in before the thread inevitably gets locked due to inactivity.
I don’t want to be negative about Linux, but if the “year of the Linux desktop” is to happen, this is one crucial thing that we (and I count myself in being a Linux user myself) must address. Every Linux user is, whether we like it or not, an ambassador, and how we deal with newbs/noobs asking questions will shape their impression of not just us, but Linux as a whole. I think there are a lot of people who are still on the fence, not because of Linux’s capabilities, but because of a pre-concieved notion of what a Linux user must be: tech-savvy and above all, willing to devote the time to learning about their machine and OS. A lot of people aren’t like that. Moreover, I think there are some people using Linux (even Arch, btw) who aren’t like that, but … yeah.
At any rate, I agree with you that a lot more people will be able to get by with a pre-installed Linux system. I think Linux is ready for being a mainstream daily driver.
Oh, yeah, I don’t think not having native MS Office apps isn’t that much of a deal-breaker. I personally use Libre Office, and despite some hiccups (their documentation do have a lot of problems IMO), it’s got a decent amount of feature-parity with MS Office. For almost all of what I want to use an office suite, Libre Office would suffice. For the exceptions, I can usually find a workaround.
Overall, I’m happy with my Linux system—to the point I barely even touch Windows anymore (my SO installed Win10 on a separate SSD for me so that I can dual-boot), but I’ve got no reason to log on Windows. I might have had some problems (mostly of my own making), but with that small exception of times that made me wonder if I’m smart enough for Linux (or yeah, basically Arch), I’m more than content a huge majority of the time.
I’m sorry for the rambling wall of text, and I hope I’ve put my message across clearly.
Cheers to that. Being welcoming and forgiving with new users or just ones who don’t know yet how to state their problem better, is a must. Assholes, like those elitists you spoke of, are not only unique to the Linux bubble, but are a sickness spread through all kinds of volunteer-based software related streams. I mean, just take a look at stackoverflow or forums and github pages of some open-source projects.
I can understand if someone is annoyed by insufficiently detailed problem threads, if they see that very often, but don’t take that out on the user, because that would be the best way to deter people from using that project. And also because it’s super unhelpful and inconsiderate.
That doesn’t mean serving someone everything on a silver plate and not expecting anything from the user. It’s okay to expect more involvement of the user to solve their own problem. However, do it in a nice way. Some mere hints, even if someone is not at the capacity to completely help, can go a long way.
As you nicely put it, every user and voluntary contributor is an ambassador of the project.
A number of years ago, I put 2 and 2 together and realized that while most of the time stuff “just works” in Linus (especially with modern versions), some hardware manufacturers have absolute ass Linux support. Predominantly, this occurs with Realtek components.
If at all possible, swap any NICs (wired, wireless, copper, optical, m.2, PCIE - doesn’t matter, it’s just that Realtek linux drivers tend to suck, and the hardware is often just not as good or efficient at the IC level) to Intel models - anything that meets your bandwidth requirements should do, and you can find them used all over the place, or salvage them from old hardware (cheap eBay 1L thin clients are a good place to pull these from, since you get a tiny computer AND a wireless NIC that you otherwise probably wouldn’t even use).
Also, sleep/hibernate is a thing that often gets wonky on a lot of Linux systems for a whole host of reasons, so simply shutting the thing down is often a better call if we’re talking about a laptop.
You nailed it. Too often when I search for an answer to an issue, someone comes in and links to the arch wiki. The wiki is great and full of information, but it doesn’t have answers for specific cases. Sometimes I just need someone to tell me which parameter I need, or to tell me my formatting is fucked up or something. I’m not a Linux expert and trying to understand what configs do what and all of the options needed all at the same time is a lot. Forums are a place to ask questions and discuss solutions, but my experiences at least with Arch have not been that.
I also use libre when I need it, but I think Office apps not being around, warranted or not, will be a disqualifier for some people. The web apps work well, but for a power user, it might not be the ideal experience.
I just had to go through an absolutely catastrophic rewrite of a bunch of official documentation that needed to be done in Word (with sharepoint stuff) and let me tell you: holy fuck their collaborative editing stuff is fucking atrocious. We lost work on that fucking doc SO MANY TIMES. Particularly, the formatting (which is important, as it’s an official Work Instruction that the FDA might ask to look at at some point) got completely fucked at least a dozen times, and we had to go through and reapply everything… only for someone to come through with a minor change (and we got tired of asking people to stop making edits, changes, or comments - with or without revision tracking (which did not seem to be actually tracking revisions, because at no point were we able to successfully roll back any changes to a known good state) because nobody fucking listens to anything and “it’s only a minor change”) and wrecks everything again. I’ve talked to various people about how flaky and sketchy our whole MSO setup evidently is, and the response was “yeah, our hosted Sharepoint instance is super fucked, but it’s not a priority to fix right now”. I don’t know why this is an acceptable state for things to be in.
We are still trying to finalize the doc.
It’s been over a month.
I’m a software engineer. I deal with complex and nuanced systems on a daily basis as my job. I avoid, and will continue to avoid, MS Office like the plague.
In my own case I’d put it down to Flatpak etc. finally resolving the software installation problem.
Installing most Linux OSes has been easy enough for decades, but a program not in your distro’s repos could be a nightmare to get working.
“./configure”
“error: libblahblah1.0.0-2 not found”
downloads tarball
“tar –xvzf libblahblah1.0.0-2.tar.gz”
“./configure”
“error: libblahblah1.0.0-2 depends on libgofuckyourself.2.0.0”
downloads tarball
“tar -xvzf libgofuckyourself.2.0.0.tar.gz”
“./configure”
“error: libblahblah1.0.0-2 not found”
🤯😡🤬
Can you imagine we did this shit over dialup too? I was there. In the dark times.
I disagree naming Flatpak etc. as the reason for more adoption. New users I know of do not know how to search for software and software alternatives in the first place.
Documentation and engagement on linux just improves by each day. Experiences are shared and people may just be curious. Then there are news about linux breakthroughs by big players like valve.
Imo a beginner linux distro should prompt on install:
If you are a potential linux adaptor do not get discouraged. You may have spent your entire life building knowledge for an other operating system. Once you grok the aimed simplicity of UNIX and which parts are involved in your daily tasks you will be at least as efficient as with other operating systems. The most inportant thing: Have fun on your journey and engage in our chats, forums and/or in social media.
Thank you for your attention.
I hope so. I’ve been using Linux for 10 years for everything except gaming. And two years ago i went fulltime with proton and lutris (switched to heroic though).
And let me tell you, we’re at a point where its multiple times more straight forward to just install something like Fedora KDE, and do almost anything windows can, than trying to deal with whatever the hell microsoft is up to these days.
The biggest problem still is software discoverability. It is our duty to guide newcomers where they want to go instead of gatekeeping.
And let me tell you, we’re at a point where its multiple times more straight forward to just install something like Fedora KDE, and do almost anything windows can, than trying to deal with whatever the hell microsoft is up to these days.
Yep that was my turning point.
Only I have to disagree with Fedora as first Linux, it requires manual fiddling with repositories just to install codecs that any average unskilled user would expect to work out of the box
The codec thing really is a bummer. But thats really one of the few things you would have to do on Fedora while theres plenty of other pitfalls with other distros too. Like an older kernel or having to manually configure drivers for some hardware with Debian, or having to deal with canonicals shenanigans on Ubuntu.
Maybe one of the more niche distros is a better guess for some, like Nobara or Bazzite for gaming.
I just switched to Bazzite yesterday and it’s insane how far linux has come. Next-next and everything works, even on a nightmare combination of hardware (Lenovo Legion half assed uefi, amd apu+ nvidia gpu).
How’s heroic treating you? I tried bottles for GOG, but it regularly fails to update either itself or cyberpunk.
I will try cyberpunk one day if its on sale and my pile of shame has gotten smaller.
I made the switch to Heroic from Lutris because the integration is just better. I used both for a while, bc the witcher 3 worked better on the legacy version for me, and heroic didn’t let you choose the (legacy or nextgen), while lutris only had the legacy version. But now you can install any version you want on Heroic (looking at you, every other platform with forced updates). Also, while Lutris downloads the offline installers off of GOG, heroic installs it via the GOG galaxy redistributable. This also makes it possible to sync playtime and savegames, although this is experimental right now. As soon as they start implementing achievements (which i think they have planned) its feature complete for me.
Updates of heroic itself and the games always went fine, although it must be said that the most challenging titles i have on gog right now are witcher 3 and metro exodus.
I think so. Installing Linux was a hurdle for a lot of people but having it by default on the Steam Deck was a bit of a game changer. Installing Windows on it versus figuring out how to use something Lutris probably takes a similar amount of effort for average casual user.
I feel like it also helps that Windows isn’t very controller friendly, in my experience, and an increasing amount of people are looking for that for couch gaming and viewing media.
No, I think the success comes from Linux becoming normalized in devices like Android and the Steam Deck. We’ll see how it shakes out.
How easy is it for someone who has no PC gaming experience (they are computer literate) and hence no steam library, to buy a steam deck and it be a comfortable user experience?
I have seen tech illiterate people who are very comfortable with steam deck.
She doesn’t even know macbook charger can charge steam deck. She was complaining to me that she is very afraid of losing her steam deck charger, since she doesn’t have a spare.
So the total positive rate, from my observation, is around 100%, with sample size of 1.
Its the most simple handheld gaming PC by far. As with all unfamiliar systems, there is a learning curve that exists, and person to person the difficulties in this will vary. But at a base level, out of the box, the SteamDeck is almost as simple to grasp as something like a Switch (or any other console). If you just want to game, and just want it to work, SteamDeck is your best choice.
Full disclosure though, the deeper you choose to dig into advanced use, the more complicated this question becomes. If you are more familiar with Windows, then using the desktop on a Windows handheld will naturally make more sense at first. But if you are comfortable with Linux (or put in the time to learn), the SteamDeck is far easier to use fully handled than it’s competition thanks to easy to remap on the fly controls and the track pads. But again, this second “advanced usage” point is moot if you just want to buy games from Steam and have them work out of the box.
Awesome. I keep recommending them to people asking me if they should buy one even though they don’t game on their PC and i love mine but the last console i owned was a Sega so i didn’t feel like I’m really unbiased at all.
