5 reasons why desktop Linux is finally growing in popularity

I can list the biggest one without having to look: Because the most popular alternative has progressively gotten worse for the past 12 years, and what was once a quality OS (sure,it had its faults and flaws, but I'll concede that Win7 was objectively a good OS) has now morphed into a combination of spyware and adware.

3. Users are finally figuring out that some Linux distros are easy to use

so recommending arch linux to newbies was counter productive all along?

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A major reason that Windows is “popular” is because it’s pre-installed on desktops and laptops. Users don’t have a choice when they go to the store to buy a laptop for doing banking stuff or save pictures from their old camcorder.

It’s the same way with browsers. IE was “popular”, but only because that was the browser that was pre-installed on Windows. The IE browser was complete shit.

Number 2 was huge for me, and it hit home when I realised that 99% of my Steam library was supported. Thankfully I don't need to use any Windows only apps (Adobe suite, etc) so the decision to move over to Linux was trivial personally

I wish installing linux for non-technical people using windows were as easy as downloading an .exe and walking through an installation wizard. Something that gave very very simple instructions, backed up their stuff, rebooted to install linux with the chosen settings, and restored their backup into linux.

IMO if it were that simple or as simple as double clicking an .exe and hitting Install Linux (with default settings) that did all of the above with a default distro set by the installer, more people would be willing to install linux.

And non of that Gnome shit. Drop them into a distro with a DE configured to look like windows (probably KDE or Cinnamon).

As much as I'd like to see Linux gaining traction, I have a hard time believing market share is as high as StatCounter reported in some places. For example in Canada, Linux usage is at 1.99%, which even still seems high to me. That's 1 in every 50 desktops. Anecdotally I can think of only 3 people, including myself, who primarily run Linux on desktop. In corporate environments, I have only ever seen Windows, or sometimes Macs deployed to employees. Even with the hate on Windows 11, it still works for most people, so they upgrade to it (begrudgingly, if they care at all), or simply buy a new computer for it. I truly wonder who else out there is running desktop Linux here in Canada...

That being said, I am less skeptical of the growth in users in India, but not for the reason the author listed. I think it's more likely that it is growing in popularity due to its cost (ie, free), as well as the fact that many distros are more lightweight than Windows, which especially benefits older or cheaper hardware. India is still a developing country and I'd imagine many don't have the resources to buy the latest hardware, and instead will make do with what they have or what they can afford. I think this will continue to be a boon for Linux in the developing world as Windows is not getting cheaper or faster.

Overall, I think Linux has nowhere to go but up. Once Windows 10 finally goes EoL, we may see more people looking to make the switch.

There's still some stuff I'm tied to Windows for, namely music players (MusicBee and Apple Music but they can be used in a VM) and VR. But it's nice to see Linux growing.

I wish it was friendlier to Nvidia (though, that's no fault of the Linux community), because that's the one hangup for me. I built my rig just a couple years ago around the 3060ti, and the spotty/shoddy support provided by Nvidia (again, not at all the fault of the Linux community) keeps me where I am in the world of Windows.

Hopefully, NVK can successfully remove that barrier for folks like me, because I run Linux on every other computer I own, and it's looking very promising that it may be the case sooner than later.

I moved to Linux on my desktop back in 2019. I was sick of my slightly old (4 year old) processor running constantly at 20 to 30 percent utilization.

During COVID, there were times I worked from home and did so successfully on Linux.

Gaming was one of the big for me as well but the transition to Linux was not really that painful. There was only one of two games that I had to leave behind, and even then, I was able to set up Looking Glass to play them occasionally (definitely not a task for a regular end user).

I think some people are too comfortable with MS Office to migrate, if anything, I think Office isa bigger barrier to Linux adoption than Windows is. After all, the are plenty of comments saying "Windows 10... Bad. Windows 11... Worse!" There are no comments focusing on the Office suite being bad.