this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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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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I am still hoping it will hit 10% market share within my life time. I remember when it was predicted to hit that in 2010, obviously it didn't happen*. Of course for me personally, the year of the Linux Desktop was 2007 when I was finally able to use it as my main OS at home, I tried it before many times since 2003.
* not counting systems that use the Linux kernel but aren't considered a traditional GNU+Linux desktop.
Do we really want that?
We have it pretty good right now. I would actually say we're living in a golden age of desktop Linux: there's constant innovation, good support, you get to do pretty much everything you need, while flying under the radar.
Linux has won the majority of the industry (servers, mobile etc.) so it's not like it has anything left to prove.
If it starts getting noticeable on the desktop I fear we're just gonna get negative attention. Users who take and not contribute, because Windows had taught them to be entitled. Unwanted attention from Microsoft, who I bet are not going to be doing nice things once they start getting paranoid about it.
I really don't think that large companies like Adobe will care about Linux even at 10% and even if they did, they are a super toxic company nowadays, the least we get to interact with them the better.
There are many games & software with no Linux support, not to mention AC blocked games. Increased marketshare could change a thing or two, at least.
As long as competition and choice continues to be the mantra of the Linux desktop, then yes, I'd love to see more and more people using it.
Very true.
I mean, Ballmer called Linux a cancer pretty early on, so that ship sailed a long time ago.
Once they start losing large sums of money due to people switching and finding viable alternatives, they certainly will care. Right now Adobe has one main thing going for them -- apathy and muscle memory of the aging demographic of their users. That will eventually change.
Absolutely. I used to be an Adobe fan, back when Kevin Lynch was a part of it, and I was a Flex developer. Then Jobs wrote his thing about Flash, and a year later, not a month after Jobs's death, Adobe dumps Flex -- and literally overnight my position changed from Flex to HTML5 and Java.
Does that mean you don't count Alpine towards Linux market share? It mostly doesn't use any GNU stuff.
You can also compile the kernel with LLVM instead of gcc, use musl instead of glibc, and use BSD coreutils instead of GNU coreutils.
not OP, but my guess is that he was referring to android
Do they use the BSD userland instead? Interesting...
Perhaps the definition isn't good enough or accurate. What would you call a system that perhaps uses Darwin kernel or Hurd plus GNU user land, or any combo of.
I think Alpine uses Busybox, but it's feasible for a Linux distro to use BSD coreutils. Not sure if any do that, though.