this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Statcounter, a website that tracks the market share of web browsers, operating systems, and search engines, is reporting that Linux on the desktop has over 4% market share for the very first time (Statcounter records ChromeOS as a separate operating system despite being based on Linux). Statcounter doesn’t provide any explanation about why the market share has increased but we can speculate what’s going on.

Linux’s march to its 4.03% market share has been a steady process ever since the final months of 2020 when Linux held just 1.53% of desktop market share. One of the biggest contributors to the growth of Linux is likely the stringent hardware requirements of Windows 11.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

I used windows all my life up until May 2023 when I decided to try Debian and then never went back. Now that Debian 12 is easy to install I hope more people will join.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Last year's December marked my one-year birthday of daily-driving Linux as my primary OS consecutively, while this January marked one year of me using a single distro reliably without running into weird issues that'd lead me into a distrohopping frenzy. I am still proud that I managed to pull this off! I guess third time really is the charm.

I had previously tried using Linux two other times before - the first time was around March 2021 when I had to finally upgrade my computer and switch out of Windows 7, and since I didn't like Win10, I wanted to try out Linux. Sadly, I didn't know much about it at the time and made a bad first-distro choice in Manjaro, whose installer broke so horribly that it somehow nuked my entire SSD. Lesson learned: Don't use Manjaro.

Second time was in November (also in 2021), where I mustered the courage to try again after many frustrations with Windows 10, but with a different distro (initially Pop!_OS, but I had a terrible experience with its community and switched to Linux Mint the next day). My days on Mint were pretty great and I still remember them fondly, but there were many things that I needed but couldn't use as Mint's repositories were ancient and lacked them (and I didn't know about Flatpak at the time), so I tried switching to other distros with newer repositories... and kept running into all sort of bizarre, nonsensical issues nobody else had (such as atrocious gaming performance, archives not working, and other things I don't remember), and my requests for help were often either ignored or responded harshly, so I ended up giving up and returning to Windows...

...Uh, that didn't last more than 6 months because for some reason Windows 10 hates me and started giving me even worse issues. I managed to find a nicer and more forgiving community of Linux users who could help, so I mustered the courage to try again. And thankfully, with my prior experience, I managed to make it stick this time by finally resolving some of the bizarre issues I had - it got to the point that I sometimes forget I'm using Linux, lol. I'm very glad I could contribute to the 4%.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago

Let the circlejerk begin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

"I'm doing my part!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

It’s free-based

[–] [email protected] -5 points 8 months ago

BASED ON GAY MANGA!

[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The Linux ecosystem has matured to the point where it can work well for the majority of people. Even the worst of Linux like Nvidia is still usable.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If you don't play games Wayland, if you do play games xorg. I haven't tested gnome but kde has a screen tearing bug for games on a gsync monitor. I don't like dealing with gnome when I have 20 windows open, sucks overusing the mouse.

Hyperland has been amazing for games since the Nvidia 550 update but there is still minor stutter in some games like gta 5.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

kde has a screen tearing bug for games on a gsync monitor

You mean on Wayland? I play a lot of games, so I haven't dared try it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I have a gsync monitor and that seems like it might be part of the problem. When Nvidia introduced vrr for Wayland to their driver, my gsync screen started to have screen tearing. Disabling vrr in kde didn't fix it.

On Windows disabling vrr disables gsync on the monitor but not on Linux. It seems to work as intended on the cheap freesync (gsync compatible) monitor my mother uses but she was also on gnome but that's xorg thanks to gnome not adopting vrr yet.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

I know you're talking about Nvidia specifically, but I find it kinda funny how people say that regarding X11 and Wayland even for AMD and Intel, because for me the experience is literally the opposite -- when I try playing games on Xorg, they always stutter and freeze really badly to near-unplayable extents even when FPS counters report they're running at 60 FPS (or if I set them to the lowest possible graphics), but ever since I switched to Wayland, the issue was just gone and games run flawlessly now. And note that I'm using Plasma, the one people often said had a worse Wayland session than Gnome and Wayland-based WMs.

I don't know why this is the case for me specifically when it seems like literally everyone else reports the opposite happening to them (and afaik Wine and most Linux games still run in XWayland). Does Xorg just hate me in particular?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I'm definitely excited to switch to Wayland properly whenever I build my next machine and escape from my GTX 1060.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Wayland is just more responsive and smoother than x11 in all cases I've tried short of really old hardware. Nvidia just haven't caught up to Wayland yet and it makes complex things like rendering a vulkan pipeline through an x11 compatibility layer buggy on Nvidia.

I'm hoping the day they finish porting wine to Wayland it'll fix all the issues I'm having with Nvidia. Or the open source driver getting good enough for me to drop the proprietary driver.

My experience XWayland apps can get a little weird on Nvidia for some reason. I've witnessed flickering ui, misplaced drop shadows, and the xorg cursor popping up at the very edge of XWayland windows. On AMD Wayland just works and at least in games AMD shows an improvement while Nvidia shows a decrease in performance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Same for me, X11 is out of the question simply because it can't do variable refresh rate on multiple monitors last I checked. And Nvidia and Wayland work together pretty well by now, at least if you are using a GTX card.

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