2024: The Year Linux Dethrones Windows on the Desktop – Are You Ready?
2024: The Year Linux Dethrones Windows on the Desktop – Are You Ready?
- NTSync coming in Kernel 6.11 for better Wine/Proton game performance and porting.
- Wine-Wayland last 4/5 parts left to be merged before end of 2024
- Wayland HDR/Game color protocol will be finished before end of 2024
- Nvidia 555/560 will be out for a perfect no stutter Nvidia performance
- KDE/Gnome reaching stability and usability with NO FKN ADS
- VR being usable
- More Wine development and more Games being ported
- Better LibreOffice/Word compatibility
- Windows 10 coming to EOL
- Improved Linux simplicity and support
- Web-native apps (Including Msft Office and Adobe)
- .Net cross platform (in VSCode or Jetbrains Rider)
What else am I missing?
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There’s absolutely zero reason to expect Linux mass adoption as it is NOT happening anytime soon. What can happen instead is increased market share to something like 10% and even that is super optimistic from a long time user perspective.
The focus should mainly go to relatively technical users that can at least manage basic stuff and not mass market consumers. It’s good when people try Linux, yes, but it’s even better when they find it useful, it does what they need and they keep using it, not just trying and go back to a primarily supported OS that’s maybe invasive but “at least it works”.
Desktop computing is transitioning from mainstream to niche. Increasingly, “normal” computing is phone, tablet, and web. Normal people increasingly use desktops as big screens for the web.
Linux is a great platform for people to access their applications on the web. It is a good option at this point to give to your aging parents to grand parents the next time you have to setup a computer for them.
The other people buying desktops are buying them for things like gaming or dev. These are more technical audiences as you suggest. Gamers are a certain kind of technical though. We are almost at the point with Linux that gaming could go mainstream. I think it already makes a good ( perhaps the best ) dev platform.
Where Linux is worst is probably “technical” Windows users as these are the desktop people that are going to have specific needs and organizations that Linux may not meet. Part of the problem with Linux is that this is the group it has been targeting. That has led to a lot of desktop complexity.
Don’t get me wrong. I am one of the people taking advantage of and contributing to the diversity and complexity of the Linux desktop. That is not helping it make the jump to mainstream desktop users though.
The future of computing is not computers. Computers, by and large, are trending down. There is already mass adoption of Linux. Android. Steam decks.
Computers with keyboards and mice are increasingly obsolete. Fighting for market share there is like trying to become the biggest vendor of sailing boats in the steamer era.
PC computers were already replaced for different use cases so yes, the market shrunk, but they will stay relevant for many others for a long time. Simple tasks can easily be achieved with super convenient rectangles that are effectively computers with different input methods, but they just won’t cut it for anything more complex like 3D modeling, CAD, video editing etc. 30 years ago it was impressive when PCs could hold a large collection of digital music with instantaneous access to all of it. Now it’s just plain irrelevant, as basically all music known to human can be accessed from anywhere with just a handy rectangle. But then even relatively simple tasks like doing taxes is a daunting task on a smartphone, and only a tiny bit more convenient on a tablet.
Of course at some point computers with completely different input and output methods can put all we know today into obsolescence, but I think we’re not even close. Some may say that VR headsets will be the thing, but personally I don’t believe so. While having virtual 3D viewport is fun and games, people seem to ignore what it takes away. Simple things like being able to see the same thing on a screen by multiple people without some video sinks between headsets or ability to interact with things without having to wear helmet or putting anything on (however lightweight it is), would be gone. Don’t get me wrong, they can certainly have their place and things they’re really good or the best at, but it’s just not going to easily replace more traditional input methods. More likely something like holographic displays paired with motion sensors recognizing body movement or some shit