With Steam and Lightworks coming to Linux and user-friendly distros like elementaryOS reachingthe public, could 2013 finally be the year?
I don't think there will suddenly be a "year of the linux desktop." It seems like each year there are more reasons to switch from other OSes, and I'm sure each year there are more GNU/Linux users, but it'll probably still be gradual before most people use linux. You have to remember that in order for average people to use Linux, there have to be more PCs in stores sold with a Linux distro. Additionally, programs like Steam should be made to work with more than just Debian derivatives. Basically, I'm scared that getting linux for the average user is still intimidating.
Here's hoping I'm wrong :D
personally im used to windows (although i wont be switching to 8), the idea of swiching to linux is a bit...meh. I mean, im much more used to windows and the vast majority of what i do involves windows. Ill probably try it one day when i get a second HDD (or ill get bored one day and partition my current hdd and try it) but till then i dont think ill be going to linux. I think a lot of people simply wont switch unless major companys suddenly dont support windows, or if windows has something drastically wrong.
I've just taken the plunge to Linux. I know I'll be back in windows in a week but touchwood so far everything is working okay.. Albeit with a bit of messing around in the terminal.
I first tried Ubuntu on my laptop and it worked well apart from the graphics driver. It seems that due to the switching graphics card in the machine it requires something called bumblebee to be as it isn't supported out out the box like windows is.
When I ran Ubuntu on my PC, unity drove me mad because it kept crashing. Couldn't figure out why so I went back to win7 and then decide to try windows 8. Surprisingly it seemed to install pretty much all of my hardware, whereas on 7 I had to do everything by downloading the drivers. I honestly think windows 8 is quite good and if Microsoft have any sense, they'll fix some of the annoyances in service pack 1.
The biggest draw back for me however was the huge footprint of windows. On a 60gb ssd it doesn't give you much to work with.
A week or so ago I gave Linux mint a go, though couldn't seem to get the graphics to work. I've now moved to menjaro Linux and it's so far working a treat. It's based on arch Linux so good for anyone wanting to learn without getting thrown in at the deep end.
The main thing that if found is not to get frustrated if a distro doesn't work for you initially. There are likely fixes that while may take a bit of time to learn is worth it because the next problem becomes easier to solve. I've fixed a boat load of problems now and feel quite accomplished about it. Just a case of keeping calm and remembering to move on if you can't fix something. Chances are that a day or two later you'll figure it out. If not, change distro.
Currently I'm trying to get some steam games and engineering software working in wine. If it works I'll never go back to windows again. If it doesn't, then I'll dual boot off another hard drive and stick to Linux for desktop use.
Yeah Back in Windows 8... and this is why...
Linux is amazing. So amazing that it hurts to leave. I currently own a PC and a laptop. Everytime I screwed something up in linux I went onto my laptop to look up the problem and fix it. I don't mind doing that, it's all about learning right? Anyway, yesterday I had to return to my university accomodation with only my PC on me however that afternoon, I broke the x display server and spent a good few hours fixing it from command line. With coursework and deadlines coming up, the last thing I needed was a system that I had broken and rendered un-useable from typing sudo commands I shouldn't have... At least with windows, I couldn't break it nearly as easily.
After installing windows 8 I realised how much I did actually like it too. Okay the metro thing is stupid and I hope that SP1 lets you disable it totally. Otherwise, it has features packed in to a similar extent that one of the linux distros might do. The point is that microsoft has locked down things to a certain extent and the amount of development that has gone into just one system is miles ahead that of desktop linux. This means that it's well polished, reletivly bug free and most importantly, compatible with pretty much everything.
I agree linux dominates the server market and places where a system only has to do a specific job. The problem with desktops is that they are used by people to do anything they want. A server can be configured once and let to run with minimal maintinence compared to a dekstop. Linux in that respect can be tailored perfectly for any job albiet reletivly simple to the person maintaining it in a server enviroment.
The problem with linux and IMO the reason it wont be the desktop OS of choice any time soon is because of all the different versions and quirks of incompatibility between them. Sure cinnamon, KDE, gnome, Xfce provide good competition, good design and looks, but they are all going in different directions. Microsoft just has an massive number of people just working on one thing and the market to drive their business hence making them work harder.
Indeed google has done a great job with this for android but even that took a while before it beat IOS. I think it will be many more years until microsoft sees competition in the desktop world from linux.
That was a long couple of rants but yeah, I don't think I'll be giving linux desktops a try for a while. I do however plan to build a minecraft server on a ARM based dev board soon. Only one OS is up to that task :P
Meh, I don't know. Windows always worked perfectly for me, and why change something that works? I'm probably gonna give Linux a try, just out of curiosity, though.
agreed, seems like the year of the OS mess... and windows is in the lead with its 2 laughable percent
I'm on linux now for 3 years and I'm 17 years old. The last version of Windows I used is XP.
There is one thing you've to accept. Linux is not Windows. Everything you know is not true anymore, everything seems complicated and wierd. If you accept it and give linux a try for at least a week, you'll understand how everything works and you'll probably like it. If you don't like it you still have the posibillity to change your window manager or even the distro. (I'm running ubuntu server 12.10 with awesome wm though I still like the unity interface)
Sometimes, there are problemes, though.
- you need a programm/game which does not run on linux
- drivers for some components are missing
- more than 2 monitors with hardware acceleration is a bad idea
- switching between integrated gpu and external gpu is pita
- there are bugs
The first problem is absolutely no fault of linux but it's bad for the user. It's getting better, though. Steam for linux is here, Spotify works, Netflix works and most of the time you'll find a program with the same features on linux. For everything else you can try wine or start a VM (VirtualBox).
The 2nd one is no fault of linux, too, and most stuff works. And if it works it works out of the box. No downloading and no installing. Also, I've not seen any device which has no driver for 2 years.
Number 3 and 4 are basically the same. The graphics drivers are still not on the level of the windows ones. Again, fault of amd, nvidia and intel. It's getting better though because the steam box will run on linux and there are reason for the hardware vendors to improve the drivers.
There are bugs and there always will be. But it's the same with windows. I don't understand why everyone is downloading the newest release of ubuntu when there is a LTS version, which is way more stable. If you don't want to spend your time on fixing stuff and/or you're new to linux you should definitly go with a LTS release.
personally im used to windows (although i wont be switching to 8), the idea of swiching to linux is a bit...meh. I mean, im much more used to windows and the vast majority of what i do involves windows
If you don't try new things you won't find better things. You can install Ubuntu on a flash drive, work from there and see if you can run everything you need.
It seems that due to the switching graphics card in the machine it requires something called bumblebee to be as it isn't supported out out the box like windows is.
Blame the Nvidia folks. Bumblebee is a programm from the community to fix what Nvidia should have done. But yeah, that's what I'm talking about and I understand you ;)
the last thing I needed was a system that I had broken and rendered un-useable from typing sudo commands I shouldn't have... At least with windows, I couldn't break it nearly as easily.
Two things went wrong here: you installed an arch-based distro (that's cutting edge and certainly not that stable) and you typed sudo in front of a command you did not know what it was doing. If you type sudo it's like "Dude, I fucking know what I'm doing." and linux will be like "Okay, but everything you do will be your fault. I warned you!".
This means that it's well polished, reletivly bug free and most importantly, compatible with pretty much everything.
That's exactly how I'd describe ubuntu 12.04. Maybe without the compatibillity stuff.
The problem with linux and IMO the reason it wont be the desktop OS of choice any time soon is because of all the different versions and quirks of incompatibility between them
There is abbsolutely NO incompatibility between different window managers and distributions. I also don't see how it's bad to have different versions a.k.a. choise.
Windows always worked perfectly for me, and why change something that works?
Because something works better, faster, more stable, more reliable, is free (in both meanings of the word), more customizable, without viruses and without backdoors.
With that beeing said, I don't believe in the "year of the linux desktop". Most people don't install OS on their computers and there aren't many computers with linux preinstalled. But I'd guess that there will be more and more computers shipping with ubuntu(!) especially in Asia.
I honestly don't care that much if others use or don't use linux on their pc's. It's on evereything else and I can have it on my pc.
I'd still suggest everyone to try linux. Put it in VirtualBox or install it on a flash drive, try it, really try it and then do whatever you want.
I'm planning on trying out Ubuntu again, I know that I might regret it just like the last time tho. I'm not too good at tech stuff. The last time I used Ubuntu I tried updating my video drivers on the old pc, and even though I followed the instructions the pc would not work. Basically after installing the driver all I saw was a black screen.
Like in the above posts, If I had a second pc or a laptop I'd be much more encouraged to use Linux as I could google any problems on the second machine. As I don't, I don't really want to be reinstalling the system and the software each time I fuck up.
You can install Ubuntu on the same machine without removing Windows. You can also install Ubuntu on a flash drive and work from there and it's like a real system. Lastly you can try Ubuntu with VirtualBox.
I don't get how you all screw everything up. You don't even have to type something in a console or do fancy stuff to install the proprietary graphics drivers (hell, you don't even have to download it). You got to "software sources" -> "drivers" and click on install.
edit: if you search for instructions always make sure you're on the right version or the world will explode.
Two things went wrong here: you installed an arch-based distro (that's cutting edge and certainly not that stable) and you typed sudo in front of a command you did not know what it was doing. If you type sudo it's like "Dude, I fucking know what I'm doing." and linux will be like "Okay, but everything you do will be your fault. I warned you!".
Yeah I know what you mean, I found online that it would have been a fix for my crashing dekstop. What it actually turned out to be was that I had changed the xorg.conf file a few days before to get my AMD driver working and hence the instruction I found online was no longer valid.
Funny enough, I've had more problems with mint and ubuntu than I have had with arch. I guess it's because you're forced to learn things more in arch and there isn't too much junk in the way to distract you. An example was when I couldn't find a driver in Ubuntu's "Additional Drivers" window. To install it through the terminal is quite easy. Only problem was is that I wasted so much time looking for why that window was blank...
It's a shame really as I think linux has amazing potential as a desktop if some big OEM just came and gave it a push in the right direction...
If there was no entry in "Additional Drivers" there probably are no. I guess you used ubuntu 12.10 with an 4000 series amd graphics card which won't work because AMD no longer updates the 4000 series so the last ubuntu version supporting it is 12.04 (though you can downgrade the xserver and then manually install the legacy driver).
It's a shame really as I think linux has amazing potential as a desktop if some big OEM just came and gave it a push in the right direction...
so true
Sorry I've been mixing up my laptop and desktop experience. My PC worked fine with a HD 7850, had to change a few settings in the xorg.conf to get my extra mouse buttons to work. When my cinnamon desktop crashed, I tried to restart x display but then it started saying it couldn't find Display 0. Took ages to fix and I have no idea how did it...
My laptop on the other hand has an Nvidia GTX 610m which no driver was detected for. By default the OS would use the sandybridge HD 3000 graphics. If I tried to install the nvidia driver manually, it didn't like it and I was getting all kinds of problems. I have yet to figure out how to get it working. As far as I've read, I need to get bumblebee configured to get it switching between the graphics but still the nvidia driver just doesn't work...
at this point gaben may or may not give it the right push in the right direction, but only time will tell
I've just been doing the regular stuff on my pc lately, playing MP3s,videos and surfing the web, etc. And I see no reason to spend on a windows copy for a new computer atm. Programming is also good on linux. I have the IDEs I need and everything's fine. And since I've just been learning web design... I'm pretty covered in Linux. I have had good luck with steam on linux and many of the supported games for it are running on my pc (still some rough edges here and there. Around 8fps on Serious Sam: BFE?). But lets remember it is still in beta. But so far, all I need is covered and I'm happy with how things are going. I had to switch to LXDE because, while it is not perfect, it's just a better experience than unity IMO. I hope it just keeps getting better.
I don't think Linux will be the great desktop OS of 2013. There are several reasons for this. First of all most PCs come with Windows pre-installed, so for the unexperienced or lazy PC user windows will be just fine. Most people do not like to install a new OS on their computer.
The second problem is that the directX library is way better than OpenGL right now, so most games will run way better on windows. So for the best gaming experience people tend to use windows.
I am not a linux hater, but there are some serious issues with the Xserver on linux. It is really arcane code and it needs to be made up from scratch to support a better and new coding paragdimes. On the window manager front I personally think there are too many "pretty interfaces" like Unity which just kills older PCs. I personally prefer a quick and fast window manager like LXDE or the very old FVWM95 or the even older FVWM. (there are some work being done to make a better Xserver-like program for example Wayland ).
Linux offers choices, but most of those choices are for more experienced users. So while it is fun to poke around in the I/O interfaces and writing drivers and protocols for obscure hardware that you build in your basement just remember that you are not the average computer-user and Linux and *BSD are not your average computer OSs. Before OEMs begin to bundle their PCs with a linux or a BSD OS you wont see a lot of people running them.
It is the chicken and the egg story just replace with "driver support and amount of users". (so microsoft can rest easy for now)
(there are some happy things in the horizon. If valve pulls of a Steam-box running linux, we could see more hardware manufacturers making drivers for linux, crossing my fingers)
For hardware programming and electronics there is a big open-source movement right now, so a lot of good tools and IDEs are coming for linux (and there some very good ones right now Xilinx ISE for FPGAs and digilents mcpide (arduino style code) for Chipkit boards are some of them, for C and C++ I can recommend Eclipse (just be prepared to do a little time in the plugins section to set it up correctly.)
So in short everything depends on how hard the giant on the desktop OS microsoft will fail the coming years (i predict not very much, but there is always the Ballmer factor [semi-colon right parenthesis] ).
A lot of computer systems run linux now already (like the well known Raspberry Pie(if you don't need HDMI i would recommend to spring for a Beaglebone it has a lot of pinouts to add servos and motors ), GPS-devices, multimedia servers, embedded systems, server systems and the list goes on and on). Linux is a very versatile system that can do a lot of things, but it requires work to make it work for you.
(I use lubuntu on one pc and FreeBSD on another when it comes to unix-like systems)