My daily use of Windows is mostly through a corporate laptop at work so definitely sanitised of most AI features.
This meme seems like it will get new legs this year thanks to Microsoft, life is funny sometimes.
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2 plus years on linux and the only reason I look back is to help other people make the switch where I can!
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You mean 2026 will be THE year?
I thought 2025 was THE year due to W10 EOL and the steamdeck.
According to all the Linuxtubers EVERYONE is switching and I’m the only rebel that still uses Windows! 
January 2024: Linux at 3.77%
January 2025: Linux at 3.72%
June 2025: Linux at 4.09%
January 2026: Linux at 4.01% (according to the chart, the headline says 4.02%)
So in 12 months with the biggest Linux advertisement campaign by MS (AI, Recall, W10 EOL, broken updates etc.) Linux added 0.29%. Even worse, in 24 months it only rose by 0.24%. this is so small, that it is hard to distinguish from the noise.
I would call this a stable 4% market share with the potential to go to 5% in a few years if conditions are right (Final W10 EOL end of ESU, steam machine etc.). If 5% is sustained over years, maybe more apps (and easier distros) will push it a bit higher. 5% would be the first milestone where we can say it becomes significant. 10% would make it an important OS providers can’t ignore.
That article you linked portraits an experience MOST normal users don’t want. They want to install ONE new OS and be happy. Not two distros, and four DE. And there is a lot of talk about command line as well. If my above 5% projection is right, that would cover about the people that are willing to CLI a little bit. As long as CLI is required, people happily live with MS BS. If people hate MS, they move to Chromebook or Apple, not to CLI. The people able and willing to use CLI, already use Linux.
Sorry to be frank, but I haven’t taken my copium yet
There is certainly a lot of chatter about switching to Linux these days what with Microsoft’s authoritarian approach to forcing things users don’t want on them.
The question I have is, how much of it is just a vocal minority, and how much is it normal people?
Even if only 0.5% of Windows users are upset enough to want to switch, that will result in lots of chatter online, but is it really significant to Microsoft’s bottom line, or is it just another one of those in a long line of them where they keep pushing and eventually most people get used to it and stop complaining?
Enthusiasts and pro-sumers have been increasingly aggravated with Microsoft for some time. I personally crossed that bridge a long time ago. Various distributions of Linux (Gentoo → Ubuntu → Mint) have been my primary desktop now for 25 years, (but I still have Windows around in a VM and as a second boot for when I need it)
I still doubt that outside of a small but very vocal minority of enthusiasts and pro-sumers this is actually happening.
Still, Microsoft did do some things recently that may have pushed more “normal” people over the edge. I can think of three in particular.
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The recent One Drive fiasco was one of them. It really radicalized a lot of people who had never thought much about their OS.
You know, the one where One Drive got auto enabled, and started syncing peoples files to Microsoft’s cloud without their consent leaving nothing but a “Where are my files” text file on their desktop, and making many think they had been victims of a ransomware attack.
Many then went and in a panicked frenzy tried to download their files back to their local machine again, and then decided they didn’t want Microsoft to have their files, so they went to one drive and deleted them all, not realizing One Drive had now forcefully become the “master” and the files they downloaded were just local checked out copies. So, when they deleted their files on One Drive, all of their recently re-downloaded files got deleted, resulting in them losing everything.
Non-techies don’t normally get heated by OS/Software changes, but when they lose control of pictures of their children to strangers, or even worse, lose all of of their pictures from when the rugrats were young, the pitchforks definitely come out.
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Another was the fact that Microsoft was trying to artificially make peoples perfectly performing older machines obsolete, so they have to spend money on a new computer they didn’t think they needed. People don’t like spending money on things they don’t think they need.
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The last was the shockingly evil decision to push “Recall” on people. That really got everyone’s attention in a hurry.
I mean, people have slowly become used to our modern corporate surveillance regime. It’s not that they love it, but they have more or less resigned themselves to *“it sucks, but that’s the way it is now.”
Recall - however - is fundamentally different, and extremely more creepy in how it tracks absolutely everything you do every second and uses AI to condense it into an annotated databaseable format that is then used for anything Microsoft wants. It is beyond creepy.
The fact that no one at Mircosoft realized this and pushed back internally is proof that there is such a fundamental level of group-think inside of Microsoft (and large portions of Silicon Valley) these days to the level that I didn’t even think was possible.
I think Louis Rossman said it right when he noted that Microsoft’s (and many other tech companies) real problem is the lack of consent. They don’t care that it is your computer, that you own outright, bought with your money that you earned. They are going to force it to serve them, and force things on you that you want. It’s a “rape culture” mindset, and normal people - not just us tech enthusiasts and older tech users who remember how things were when we were in control of our own tech - are finally starting to get fed up.
Still, I’ll start believing that it is actually widespread when I start seeing it show up in tectonic shifts in things like browser view stats and things like that.
Linux use was traditionally something for a small subset of geeks (myself included).
Now we are seeing lots of chatter from new categories of geeks who previously were Windows absolutists and had no interest in Linux.
The question is, will this contagion spread to the general population? That is the part that I am not so sure about.
Maybe I am just jaded. I have seen “the year of the Linux desktop” proclaimed year after year for decades, only to never have it happen. I’ve even started to believe that maybe it is better if it never happens, due to the influence the influx of new users inevitably will have on Linux, changing it away from how those of us who have been happy with it for 25-30 years like it.
I still hope it does though. I would love nothing more than to see Microsoft finally crash and burn for their several decades of evil behavior.
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This thread is not meant to be too serious. All fun and games. Its still a meme 
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I would not listen to people talking about switching, but only the ones that actually switched. Someone who hasn’t switched in 2026 despite all the MS stuff, but just talks about switching, is unlikely to actually follow through.
And I think the Linuxtuber who claim Linux is just easy and the same as Windows do Linux a big disservice. They just lead to disappointment. If Linux would be as easy as Windows, and if Gimp was as good as PS, everyone would be using it. Obviously there are upsides and downsides and each user needs to weigh which OS is the lesser evil.
And at the end of the day, many of those Linuxtubers use a Mac and proprietary software to edit their YT video. And they talk about using Linux for privacy reasons, right before reminding us to follow them on YT, X, and Instagram
A large portion of home users may as well switch to Chromebook or iPad. Using a desktop or laptop is a bit dated for many normal users. Use a WiFi printer, and the chromebook or iPad can fulfill most simple needs. Basically the need that a beginner Linux distro “for your mom” covers. Linux/Windows are way overblown for that need. The real advantage of Linux for those users is to recycle an old PC. But if you needed to buy a new PC “for your mom” and install Linux (with the occasional need to fix something), or buy a Chromebook or iPad, the latter would be better options in many cases with zero support need.
And prosumers or professionals very often rely on a lot of hardware/software that is Windows or Mac only. Plus corporation IT departments use MS products for everything (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook…). And that is where the real money is for MS.
Most users don’t care about W10 EOL and just keep using it the same way they used XP or W7 beyond EOL till they bought a new PC. And the few that are sophisticated enough to install Linux, also can figure out Rufus to remove account/TPM requirements. At this point pre-TPM PCs must be at least 8-9 years old. Most users that use desktops for real production or games likely have newer hardware anyway. i think Linux got as much mileage out of the TPM requirement as was possible. There won’t be a new big wave of Linux users in a year that cry about their then 10+ year old PC. i have i7 from 6th/7th generation and anything below that isn’t really great for W11 anyway. So that TPM requirement becomes a moot point. Same way that SSE 4.2 requirement that removed 15+ year old PCs isn’t important. Most users will never ever install an OS in their life, neither Windows nor Linux.
Isn’t “Recall” only for copilot-certified laptops with neural CPU? If so, it doesn’t matter for people who didn’t actively buy that device. OneDrive can be de-installed. Yes, it sucks it is enabled by default and people had issues losing data. And again, someone sophisticated enough to install Linux, also is able to remove OneDrive. Funny enough, some Linux distros include OneDrive. MS Edge also exists for Linux. So, there must be a market.
Ultimately most users just buy what is convenient. No one is forced to buy Windows, everyone should be able to build a PC and not pay for Windows and install Linux. But reality is, they walk into BestBuy, and buy the PC that is cheap, but sounds like it has impressive specs. And when they come home, it works and they blissfully ignore the popups and notifications (that all are easy to remove). Sad, but true.
I love my Linux PCs and tried all options to make them work for desktop. Ultimately it failed with software support. and all the VM/dualboot, wine, Winboat options were just a hassle. Now I use Debian with full Windows compatibility (aka W11 IOT). I use Linux in living room for YT. But I also run into the issue, for DRM content (Netflix) i use a W11 PC to get full resolution. If that ever changes, I can use more Linux. But as of now, this is as far as it goes. I love Linux and it has potential, but for many users it is full of compromises.
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While I do think Linux is starting to become significant with gamers (thanks to Valve throwing their weight behind it and immutable distros allowing for a more “appliance” like experience), most people have windows because it it comes on their work computer, or it came with the box they run a browser on. Gamers are a vocal minority.
Windows is painful and stupid, but the population is broadly already used to that flavor of painful and stupid. Switching to Linux requires getting used to a different kind of painful and stupid, for benefits which are hard to notice for most.
Keep in mind, most people are content with their horrible phone experience.
Where I see the most drastic change coming, is from European governments and businesses. They now have very good reason to rapidly and forcefully remove dependence on an American tech hegemony that all too easily bows the knee to a vindictive narcissist president that has escaped accountability and restraint.
I have my severe doubts that the EU will build a “better” tech empire, given the almost monthly anti-privacy/security legislation they keep trying to pass, but high on the todo list is getting off an operating system that can be/is hijacked by a hostile adversary.
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I would argue that Linux can actually be easier than Windows depending on your use case.
It’s the people who expect Linux to be Windows who are the problem, and who eventually get disappointed.
I tend to look at it like a blank slate.
If you had never used a computer before and were learning everything from scratch, I actually think most modern Linux distributions are easier and less work than Windows. Can you make them complicated by getting into the nitty gritty details? Sure, but you don’t have to.
Part of the problem is when users have their mind set that things should work the way they are used to in Windows, and only the way they are used to in Windows, and are not willing to relearn how to do things that they get into trouble. They confuse “easier” with “more similar to what I am used to”.
Personally I started with the Commodore 64 and it’s BASIC-based operating system when I was really young, moved on to DOS during my formative years. My first exposure to a GUI was on an Amiga 500 at my friends house. The first GUI I used myself was Windows 3.11. I was resistant to Windows at first, but eventually I embraced it when it was much easier for web use in the early 90’s, but I still often fell back on DOS, particularly for games. It wasn’t until Windows 98 SE I was a full Windows convert, but that only lasted until ~2001 when I started moving to Linux.
At this point have been on Linux so long that having to use Windows gets me frustrated, because I immediately notice the things that are clunkier and more difficult to do.
Put me in front of MacOS and I feel absolutely handicapped. Everything feels backwards and wrong to me. Does that mean Mac’s are “more difficult to use”? No. It’s just not what I am used to.
It’s a different operating system. Its going to do things differently and work differently. You should never expect it to change for you. You have to change the way you do things.
In a way the mindset of these people switching to Linux and expecting it to be Windows reminds me of the people who switch to EV’s and are then disappointed, because they expected to only use public charging stations, when EV’s are a brand new paradigm that pretty much relies on charging at home overnight, and being fully charged (or well, 80% unless you need more) every morning and never needing to stop at a gas station gain. They missed the whole point, and now they are blaiming the electric car for not working like their ICE car instead of changing their ways.
New systems and new technology require that you change your workflow and habits, not the other way around.
One of the biggest dangers of all of this - IMHO - is the push that all of these new Linux users have on changing Linux so it becomes more Windows-like, and that’s a concept that many of us long term Linux users find horrifying.
And yeah, the workalike programs can be a little clunky. Depending on the ones you use and how you use them they can range from almost almost as good to feeling like a bit of a disappointment.
Gimp may not have all of the modern features of the current Photoshop, but the current Photoshop is a freaking $275 per year subscription and Gimp is free.
Gimp reminds me a lot of Photoshop in the late 90’s / Early 2000’s. I had a copy of Photoshop 5.5 (not CS5, but just 5.5) back then, and and that version of Photoshop felt pretty feature equivalent to Gimp. Or I should say, modern Gimp feels like Photoshop 5.5, but on steroids. Similar feature levels, but all the limits have been removed.
To be honest, that is really all most people need. Scaling, copying and pasting layers, most of the important stuff is there. You can do almost everything Photoshop can do with it, but you just have to do it manually and be creative. Lots of the “do shit for you with AI” is not there. I guess that’s what you pay the ridiculous subscription fees for.
You can actually add some of those AI-style features to Gimp via plugins. There are even some paid license ones. But honestly, it is a bit clunky.
Some people like being hand held through everything I guess, and they are willing to pay a princely sum for the privilege.
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For professional users, that is a steal. If you edit images for a living, a fulltime person will invoice hundreds or thousand times that amount. Even if PS is only 10% better, that pays for itself. My BIM software at work with all add-ins cost way over $4K/year. And it is worth every penny. Obviously, occasional or home use wouldn’t need any of that. And if Gimp is good enough, there also is a Windows version. So, you are not gaining much by using Linux. And I think Affinity is now free, but not for Linux.
With AI, simple photo editors may become obsolete anyway.
Some aspects of installation and setup in Linux are better. But I even ran into the issue that Brower installation can be more daunting than expected. I Installed Chrome on Debian/MX Linux and you think this is easy:
- Chrome is not in the repo
- Had to enable flatpack
- I then installed Chrome (flatpack) and used it
- All good, except, it took 2-3 seconds to start Chrome and see the dancing chrome icon. And opening chrome added another Chrome symbol to my taskbar
- Researched and a forum member told me to de-install the flatpack and install the .deb
- I also learned, a flatpack called “Chrome” could have been created by anyone, not just Google (scary!)
- I downloaded Chrome from Google and installed the .deb
- re-logged in and now Chrome starts up fast, and also doesn’t create the duplicate icon on my taskbar. Now t works like in W11, I click, and Chrome is open instantly.
Obviously now I know to install the .deb/.rpm version. But this isn’t obvious at all. In Windows you only download the Chrome.exe from the correct website and you know it is the original.
Yes, if you are simple and don’t care about a slower PC, and a messy UI, you could just use the default snap or whatever. But even something simple as a browser required me to research and do some extra steps. And that also taught me that the package manager situation isn’t getting better. Snap/flatpack are slower and also bring the danger of files that are not original. I don’t game, but I heard people on Ubuntu had issues with Steam that was resolved by using the original Steam .deb (after they used the original Ubuntu snap).
People are fine with change if the new OS is easy to use. Look at MacOS market share, that all used to be Window users. Or iOS/android. Windows users had no problem switching over. What all those OS have in common, they don’t require CLI or research to use them. My first smartphone came with no manual - I just used it and got it figured out with very occasional googling. For Linux, it seems you need AI, forums, Wikis etc. for even relatively easy things. This isn’t appealing to the masses. that is also why I say, Chromebook and iPad et al will gain more dissatisfied Windows users than Linux. Most home users don’t need the power (and complexity) of Linux, or Windows.
Been using Mint on my old laptop for years. On my main desktop gaming rig made the definitive switch to Linux november/2025. Windows shall never touch this hardware again. Even made a GPU switch from nVidia to AMD and Arch had no complaints about it (just installed a couple pkgs before).
Missing MusicBee for my music library playing/management, maybe a bit of Apex Legends (Arc Raiders have plug that hole pretty nicely), but other than that, everything is smooth as ass.
However on my old desktop that I use for work, still got Windows 10 LTSC with a bunch of shit turned off (thanks Chris Titus!).
Ideally an OS should give you the choice of GPU. It shouldn’t require you to limit hardware choice (unless you found AMD better for other reasons). Especially since the market leader of GPU would have to be avoided.
I don’t game, but many smart people said Nvidia actually has the better drivers (even if AMD is built in). Did you have issues with Nvidia on Mint, or a modern distro? Many people use Nvidia successfully on Linux.
I found “Strawberry” a good mp3 player in Linux. But i just simply play all my mp3 randomly (use Media Monkey on W11). It was surprisingly hard to find an mp3 player that plays truly randomly and doesn’t end up repeating the same songs every few days. Strawberry came default on MX Linux 25.
Had a GTX 1660 Super before, bought just before the prices went crazy in 2020. Thinking about it, was a good time for my old card to fail.
Everything was working fine with nVidia, but it was time for a upgrade. Got a deal on a RX 9060 XT.
For the music player, Elisa has been a nice replacement. Similar vibe with the way I used MusicBee.
The real solution here is not not use Chrome. (again, change your workflow to suit the OS, not change the OS to suit your workflow)
I mean, if someone is running from Windows for all the negative things Microsoft is doing, why invite Google in to do all the similar things by voluntarily using Chrome?
But yeah, Flatpaks (and Snaps, and AppImage) all suck, slow things down, result in bloat, and are theoretically potential security problems.
The best way to use Chrome on a Linux system that uses the apt package manager, you are probably better off adding the Google Chrome PPA and installing it that way.
At least then you won’t have the FlatPak related lag and bloat.
I would not manually install the Deb as this does not allow your systems package manager to manage updates.
https://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/google_chrome
Last I checked it still worked, but who knows for how long. Software developers are pushing hard for everything to switch to Flatpak/Snap/AppImage as it makes their lives easier, but it really is bad for the user.
And this is another one of those “change your mindset, don’t use Linux like you use Windows” moments.
A Windows user is used to manually downloading software and installing it. They are also used to manually downloading drivers and installing them. This is not the best way to do things when using Linux.
With Linux it is better to avoid manually downloading and installing software whenever possible. Use the built in software store or package manager (depending on distribution*) to get everything you can. If something is missing that you need, check to see if there is a trusted PPA that can add it to your repository. (but be careful who you trust when it comes to PPA’s as an untrusted PPA can inject malware)
Only if all else fails when it comes to using or adding to the systems main package manager would I even start considering downloading programs and manually installing them.
*Linux Mint is Debian/Ubuntu-based and has gone a long way to make a user friendly software store, though it will also install Flatpaks, so try to avoid the Flatpak versions if you can
And I’m telling you. I find Linux easier to use than either Windows or MacOS.
It really is more of a matter of them being stuck in their mindset with their way of doing things, not that Windows or macOS are intrinsically easy to use.
A typical Linux user of a modern distribution doesn’t need to ever use the command line. Sure, sometimes command lines are easier for seasoned users than it is to hunt and peck for the right checkbox in a GUI configuration, but that exists in Windows too, with many troubleshooting guides giving users instructions that involve pasting powershell commands.
If my grandmother were still alive I would have no problem setting her up with a fresh install of Linux Mint. She may not even have noticed notice that it wasn’t Windows.
She would click the web browser icon pinned to the task bar to launch her browser, and occasionally she’d be prompted to install system updates.
MacOS has the illusion of ease of use because people keep saying it so much, but if you ever try to do anything even remotely off the beaten path, it gets really challenging in a hurry.
If you think of what Linux is actually doing for many people these days, it’s amazing how easy it actually is. Think of the infinite complexities of emulating a Windows environment including wrapping DirectX to Vulcan to run a game of all things under linux.
This ought to be one of them most challenging things ever, but you can accomplish it in Steam by just clicking a GUI install button. That is actually quite nuts, and we have Valve to thank for that.
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This is a typical Linux forum answer. Telling people what software to use to be pure
My computer - my choice! I can do with MY PC what I want
In seriousness, it is all good and I appreciate differing opinions and truly appreciate what you say.
Chrome is THE largest browser, so ignoring this is a bad ideological move from the repo maintainers. I have a Pixel phone, use Keep, Docs, Gmail, password manager and so on. And on a new PC, I just log into Chrome, and all bookmarks and web apps are there. My cheat sheet how to set up Linux/ W11 are on Google docs, so that is the first thing I need. And any other cloud solution (inc. Apple) also steals my data. So, for me it works. Firefox sucks (and is financed by Google to give the illusion of competition), and basically most other browsers are Chromium based as well.
Installing the .deb/,rpm automatically adds the Google repository and that updates Chrome. Maybe Ubuntu (from your link) prevents that to coerce users to use Snaps? But on Debian/Fedora the repository is added automatically and Chrome gets updated.
I’ve never used PPA, nor do I know how to know who is trustworthy. But by downloading from Google directly, I know it is Google, and not someone else. Yes, if it was in the repo curated by the distro-maintainers, I would use that. But alas, they didn’t include that. And any other source could be scary.
You are absolutely right, a user just using a browser wouldn’t notice. I made KDE look exactly like W11 (center task bar, use the Windows icon for app launcher etc.), and when just browsing, I have a hard time knowing which OS I use. But here is where Chromebook or iPad is an even simpler solution (unless, FOSS/privacy is a requirement - which for most users it isn’t).
I have auto-updates (KDE) enabled. I don’t understand why people use CLI for updates. I realize some knowledgeable people research the updates beforehand. But most people don’t have the know how to do that and are better off just updating.
But it is worth to define the user:
- in your example, someone else set it up, and the person using just clicks on Chrome. If they ever need something else, you might be the one doing it for them. In that case, the user’s skills don’t matter, your skills matter.
- In my case, I define the user as the person who is fed up with Windows, downloads the iso, puts it on a USB stick, installs it and sets it up. Admittedly, most Windows users also are not on that level.
Probably true for simple setups and for typical beginner distros. But even on Fedora, I had to use CLI to enable the codec repos (adding them was GUI/downloading the file and installing, but that alone didn’t enable them). Debian required me to edit a lot of files to correct some KDE bugs or missing features. MX Linux might be the one that I truly didn’t need CLI for (long time since last installation, can’t remember). But my needs are simple.
I had another thought on the Adobe issue: how many people are home users, AND subscribe to their products? And home users that have an old PS version, are able to use it in Linux. I can’t imagine normal users edit images at a desk these days. Most people take pics with their phone, and that has all editing tools one can imagine. And what Linux tubers say, they use GIMP for video thumbnails. Guess what, most people don’t have a YT channel or a need for thumbnails. And people that actually subscribe to the whole suite, likely do it professionally, and they use the best tool, not the cheapest. The same way they get the best PC and OS for their needs damn the cost.
I think this whole “Adobe on Linux” is a red herring. Maybe 0.00000001% of users would switch to Linux because of Adobe offering a Linux version. Linuxtubers use that as an excuse or reason to explain why not more people use Linux. And many Linux users use Linux to save money, reuse an old PC, or to support FOSS - no way they would subscribe to Adobe products.
And if we talk about a workplace that uses Adobe, their computers are set up by IT for reasons that benefit IT and make life of IT staff easier. They use Windows (or Mac) for a variety of reasons and don’t switch out their whole corporate IT system to Linux like they waited all those years for Adobe to offer a Linux version. If they use a Mac/W11 and that runs Adobe already, there is no way IT lets that one person who wants Linux use Linux.
maybe now that AI is running the ship they’ve reconsidered leaving us on hold for ~10 years.
I’m still kinda salty, but they haven’t been actively trying to screw over linux users either, I’ll take indifference over the alternative.
- i’ll still believe it when i see it.
Who knows? They did get new ownership recently so that might have something to do with it .