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Ask Slashdot: Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'?
An anonymous reader writes: Investors, enthusiasts, and Linux distro makers have for more than a decade projected that the upcoming year will be the year of Linux on the desktop platform. But we just can't seem to get to that year for some reason. Windows continues to dominate the consumer market. Apple's macOS X is quickly gaining ground among business customers and designers, and is already ahead of Linux. Do you see Linux getting a significant boost in the desktop market in the coming years?
What happened was, we'd already been using it for years so it sounded really stupid and it was only ever a joke where people laughed at anybody who had repeated the phrase.
It was already a great desktop, and it still is.
New users are not really useful to us, either. Please don't switch.
From 2016, 2015, 2014 . . .
Posted from my iPhone
I don't see Linux gaining a significant part of the desktop market in the foreseeable future. And, as an avid Linux user, I think that's a great thing.
I don't want Linux to get so popular. Getting that popular brings two really terrible things with it: more attention from hackers, and a more rapid degradation of the operating system as it tries harder to cater to everybody.
The desktop was replaced with the smartphone and considering that every android phone runs on a linux kernel its fair to say that Linux rules the world
OSX is based on BSD, does that count?
Seriously. The issue with desktop systems is they need to be responsive in ways which violate The Unix Philosophy or are bogged down by adhering to it. The only major attempt to address this has been Systemd, which is itself so bogged down with developer pissing contests, poor architectural choices and (likely intentional) security holes that it just didn't take off. Add in the issue of DRM providers (cough. Widevine cough) which stops most of the content from making it there for platforms like FreeBSD and you end up with a shit user experience.
...will be the year of Linux on the desktop. W8 4 it!
Linux is way too hard to use for most grandmothers.
This hasn't been true for years. Well, let me rephrase that: Linux hasn't been any harder to use than Windows for years.
.
So it you phrase the statement a little differently, from "Year of Linux on Desktop" to Year of Linux for Personal Computing," that year is in the past due to smartphones becoming the main personal computing device for many. Not only is it in the past, but it is continuing to recur each year..
An artificial goal designed to hide the fact that Linux is successful on servers, embedded systems, mobile devices, as well as niche markets like supercomputing? You might as well try to hype the "year of carpooling by using an app".
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
When was YOUR year of the Linux desktop?
Mine was 1998. I installed Redhat 5.2 and Linux has been on my desktop ever since.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
In case you missed it, it's called Un*x on the Desktop and it's everywhere.. MacOS bunded a BSD kernel and the community started ported opensource to it. Microsoft now has a ubuntu lite Bash Shell for Windows. Un*x became a commodity.
I made this: http://www.bpftpserver.com
I use Linux as desktop at home, and at work. I get really grumpy if I have to use Windows.
Moved my totally non technical mother to Linux a few years back. Smartest move I ever made, support calls after the first two weeks fell off to nothing. She loves it., Never crashes, much faster, not waiting for endless updates.
(Linux Mint Cinnamon, less of a learning curve than Win 10)
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
Those are sort of on the desktop. Granted given that the general trend is people are using mobile devices more often than not, and your choices are a Linux kernel or Mach, we've already been there a while.
Visceral infighting killed any positive effort for expanding the ecosystem. For an example, join a forum and ask for help. Bonus points if you have a positive opinion of systemd or pulse.
And this time, WE MEAN IT!
My 83-years old father uses Ubuntu. Granted, I was the one who installed it and he only uses Firefox.
There is no incentive for the majority of end-users to use Linux. Few people bother with desktops to start with and the ones that do usually buy a pre-built which comes with windows installed. Windows is prettier, already installed, and has significantly fewer driver issues. Linux wins in smartphones and servers but end-users don't care about a slight boost in efficiency at the cost of aesthetics and installation hassle and will continue to use Windows.
I run the same way, but I skip the BSD OS in favor of a linux flavor.
I have been using Linux exclusively since 1998, when installing Linux on a PC was an adventure. My first distro was Redhat 6.1 which I bought at the local BestBuy--on 3.5" floppies. Getting various bits of hardware was tricky (anybody remember the ZipDrive?), and the dialup connection I had in those days was iffy, but I got everything to work with the help of a guy at my ISP who was a Linux geek. I had trouble downloading and installing updates because I had difficulties with the CLI incantations. Then I tried Mandrake 8.0, this time on CD on a different machine. Still had trouble with urpmi, but the installation was much easier than on earlier machines. Finally, I switched to Ubuntu 6.06 and switched from dialup to DSL, and I have stayed with it ever since. I currently have Ubuntu 17.04 on an HP notebook. The only solution to moving more users onto the Linux desktop is for we users to proselytize! I give out Ubuntu on usb keys as birthday and holiday gifts, and provide support whenever needed. Linux forever, down with M$!!!
Whatever Happened To the 'Year of Linux on Desktop'?
You know that's the joke, right?
If you want a serious answer, it's because it still doesn't "just work."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
For Linux you have three supported products: Ubuntu, SuSE, and RedHat. Of course *none of them* are that eager to play the consumer market game for revenue.
For Windows, how many people in the *consumer* space ever reach out to Microsoft? Generally speaking, they reach out to the vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo) if they need help, and more advanced professionals engage with MS in their community forums.
The other stuff is just out of date. You can go your whole life of updating an Ubnutu install without seeing a CLI. I can't imagine going without it personally, but the fron and center option is a gui. If the usage is little more than what they would do with a chromebook, the CLI can be entriely ignored.
The reality of course is that WIndows OEM licenses are cheaper than the risk of a customer not being familiar with their new device and calling out of confusion, or returning the device for being 'different'. So every PC comes preloaded with Windows. And 90+% don't care about the operating system at all, they have more important things to them to worry about.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No, Corel blew it in 1999. They had Word Perfect and Corel Draw on their distro, and a PC that was low cost and ready to work. They were a year late and a dollar short for what could have been The Year. After that, Outlook became entrenched.
Cough. BS.
I have had Linux boxes running for years. No problem with updates.
I leave my Windows box up...a "magical" update comes down and the next thing I know my box is rebooted....
I have used Linux as my primary desktop since ~1997. As a software developer it is a power platform. The shell is critical. However, as a conventional desktop it is just not competitive with Windows. And OSX isn't either. Both Linux and OSX are below 4% market share. Vertical integration is very weak. Windows has an identity management system that allows transparent filesharing, advanced group based access control, sophisticated business applications. Getting stuff like that to work on Linux is too difficult or simply not possible. So software venders focus on the Windows platform. And rightly so. I just tried and application that recently released a Beta for Linux and it was a total fail. I occasionally dabble in engineering related stuff and I have to have a Windows machine for all of the various programs for cad, PCB design, simulation. Yeah, programs like that exist for Linux but they're just not good. And I know people agree with me that the GNOME desktop has actually regressed. It used to be much more usable. But they dumbed it down for reasons that where not entirely clear. My guess would be that when new developers come along, they have a tendency to want to re-write everything from scratch. I'm not diametrically opposed to this strategy but you better come up with something that was at least as good as what you're dumping. And that didn't happen. There are other integration related issues as well. For example, for as long as I can recall there has always been a fight between X and the desktop over who should remember the positions of windows. X says applications should save that information and recall it when re-launching an app. Desktop people think it should be handled by lower level facilities. Now, whenever logout and back in, all of my terminal windows have to be re-launced and repositioned (I run 6-8 terms on 4-5 workspaces). That is something that actually used to work somewhat in GNOME. It worked in WindowMaker IIRC. The Linux desktop has been dumbed way down to the point where it's not nearly as useful as it used to be. At least not for people doing more than surfing the web and email. Might as well just get a Chomebook for that.
What is this "desktop" you speak of?
Users will not come until the most used programs come to Linux.
Companies will not make program for Linux until there are many users
Even Window's 10 Bash is better than Cygwin...(and I LIKED Cygwin)
Sorry... the NetWinder was 2002. Imagine a beuwolf cluster of them...
The main reason I dual boot is for all the games that aren't available on Linux. Wine isn't a good answer. Even if I can get a game to work under Wine, and can get decent performance, the next update to Wine is too likely to break it.
Plus, decent 3d accelerated graphics is still a pain to get working in Linux. Best chance is to get whatever card from a generation or 2 ago that is the most standard and tested. Without hardware acceleration, a lot of games are unplayable. Too often, open source drivers fall back on dog slow software emulation. Proprietary drivers have even more bugs. Nvidia and AMD (ATI Radeon) haven't been friendly enough. Possibly Intel's integrated HD graphics may be the best supported, because Intel is trying to upgrade their offerings in this market and seeks ways to differentiate themselves. But those are barely adequate low end performers.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
...when all users move to "the cloud".
There will be no money to be made with standalone PCs with local OSes, and that's when all the businesses will stop putting money into it. Deal with it, bitches.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It's actually easier. I've put my in-laws on Linux (Mate as a desktop environment) and it's much easier for them. Windows 10 is terribly confusing (even for me). Mate has a 'start' menu not too different from Windows XP, using Linux Mint means that it practically updates itself. And they love the fact that they are much less vulnerable for malware.
Not to mention the retarded 'Windows is updating' message lasting forever even on a I7 with SSD and lots of memory when shutting down AND starting up. At most Linux wants a normal restart after it updated itself after it quietly updated in the background.
Elderly people that don't do much more than use it for online stuff are better off with Linux.
The only thing keeping a lot of people and especially companies on Windows is software that only runs on Windows. With more and more software being web based that is becoming less of a problem. Only the large volume of MS office documents will be a big hurdle for a long time IMO
---
Windows & MAC now automagically update behind the scenes and mostly work.
I don't know about Mac, but if Windows upgrades were so magical, why do I end up cursing Microsoft every time they happen?
I speak as a person who used WordPerfect and who still misses the "Show Formatting" feature it had.
But I was there when DR Dos and the others fight to try. They got close....
You'd expect that if it's pre-installed then everything would work fantastic.
Why in the world would you expect that?
The closest it's been was 2010. It's been all downhill since. Gnome 3, Systemd, etc... Nobody has really been able to get the mojo back. Not even Cinnamon/Mint.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
It's next year, of course.
From the very first days I ever heard the term, there were only two sorts of people who ever used it:
1) Linux people who were making a joke
2) Linux-haters
It's a meaningless thing.
Linux will never take over the desktop. Only the GNU Hurd kernel can save us.
I doubt we will really see Linux on the corporate desktop any time soon but we will see it powering more and more kiosks and self-serving style computing. I can see Linux powering things like vending machines and kiosks selling services.
Here is a blast from the past for you:
https://linux.slashdot.org/sto...
If I install Windows there is one version of it, Win 10; same with Apple. If I install Linux which distro, or even non-gnu. Until all the Linuxers come together and agree, "I think this distro is horrible but one Linux on a desktop is better than a good Linux" it won't happen.
Similar things need to happen with stuff like Vi vs Emacs.
There's too much infighting.
Controls need to be changed to match Windows or Apple.
As does appearence. Of course it can still be changable.
Being open/free might actually make it harder to be desktopable.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Hardly true. Recently I had to walk a fairly tech-savvy coworker through editing their grub file over the phone. The machine had XFCE and no editor other than vi. No bets taken on whether this took less than 25 minutes.
Aah. The good old days. I used Red Hat Linux on an AST Ascentia J50 laptop for a few years around 1997 while going to university. I think the year of the Linux on Desktop was supposed to b. There must have been a Slashdot article back then about it.
Shit. This makes me feel old.
Linux is almost usable as a desktop right right now. The guy who ran the "linux sucks" presentations just had his last talk in 2017. Year after year, he'd bring up the same problems over and over, but eventually they did get fixed (albeit a lot later than promised). It's not as if every problem is currently fixed, but most have been and the few remaining have clear paths to being fixed. Or to put it another way, enough stuff has been fixed or almost fixed to no longer warrant further "linux sucks" presentations.
All that's really left is widespread integration of Wayland (and deprecation of xfree86, x.org), stable and high performance open source graphics drivers, game support.
While that's not that many things, those things are big and they are dealbreakers. I wouldn't recommend linux to a gamer now, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"Linux Sucks... For the Last Time" - 2017
Android is based on the Linux kernel. If you want, you can use it via a Unix command line. Add the missing command line tools if you want the full experience.
Perhaps a better question would be, why does open source suck at making a desktop/mobile platform, while a company which uses the same open source managed to make a platform which displaced Windows as the #1 OS in use. IMHO it's user friendliness. The programmers who make open source projects are notorious for prioritizing their own needs above their users', and demand some sort of worship from users (don't ever piss off a programmer in an open source support forum if you ever want a particular bug fixed). This results in an obtuse user interface with poor documentation, and a steep learning curve. That may work for the 5% of the population who are geeks, programmers, and tinkerers who love to spend time figuring stuff out, but it doesn't work for the remaining 95%. Google just took that obtuse open source, found a bunch of skilled programmers who could grok that obtuseness, and paid them to make it friendly to use for the 95% (money in lieu of worship). And it took over the world.
The planet has 7 - 8 billion people.
Probably it will take another 100 years till they all have moved to the cloud.
Oh, you did not mean that cloud ... my mistake.
Honestly: why would *I* move to the cloud? I have a laptop. Everything that is essential is on that laptop and on the backups. Why would I move to the cloud? So I have no access to my stuff in a plane, train? In a foreign country with absurd internet costs ... or I have to buy a new sim card first and probably a new phone as my iPhone has no dual sims?
The only interesting part about clouds is storage for low GB phones. For real computers it is completely irrelevant except for data exchange via drop box and a like.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Do you use Android? Do you spend more time with your phone or tablet than on a workstation or laptop? Congratulations, you're in the year of the Linux desktop.
Meanwhile I've got an XBox One S for movies and some games, several generations of other game consoles, a couple of Raspberry Pis running Raspbian but often used to emulate older console and desktop systems, a WebOS smart TV, a Linux smart TV, a couple of Chromecasts, a Windows desktop for games, a Linux desktop for personal non-game use, a Linux laptop for travel, a Mac desktop for company work that mostly connects to Linux systems and runs Linux VMs, a Mac laptop for company work that mostly connects to Linux machines or to my work desktop, two Android phones one each for work and personal use, and a non-Fire Kindle for reading without interruptions like I get on my other devices. My girlfriend has a Mac laptop, a Linux desktop, and an Android phone.
So... what's the question again?
Almost there...
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Macs don't upgrade behind the scene.
They ask, you say yes or no.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Android has become even more insufferable than Windows, with annoying useless spyware/adware programs pre-loaded that most users have no way at all to remove, due to device makers not providing hardware drivers and software access permission.
Also (partly due to that?) Android has the charming feature of updating until the meager memory fills up, and then you,,,, ummm,,, what? Then you go buy a new one. Because the vast majority of people with a device in this state have no idea what to do with the thing after it keeps warning that it can't get updates. They assume that they shouldn't keep using it, but they don't know what to do when there's twelve programs named Google, Google+, Google.com, Google.service, Google.accounts, Google.user and so on. -And you can't delete ANY of them anyway, even if you did know what to get rid of.
Android is an OS that device makers wanted; its main feature is that it can be locked down against modification--and Google catered heavily to that desire. It's not the one that users wanted.
It's on Windows 10 toda! What? You said you Windows on the desktop right??
http://saveie6.com/
For me it happened in 2009, where I had this release of reality when I realized there was nothing that Windows had that I couldn't do it on Linux Mint/SUSE. Before that it was a hit and miss and using Virtualbox.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Linux has plenty of nerds that are software engineers developing software. Something Linux and pretty much the entire F/OSS ecosystem is missing is quality UX/UI designers and engineers. There isn't much by way of decent collaboration tools in this department. Another area of interest is the lack of technical writers to write up solid documentation. Instead, our community is full of forum threads that consist of only two posts: someone asking a question, and that person getting a reply to "just fucking google it" (which btw this forum thread usually *IS* the top result on google)
There is no such thing as "macOS X". It was called Mac OS X before. The new name is macOS.
#DeleteFacebook
Android is a horrible example to use of Linux being popular. In fact, it shows the complete opposite: Linux can only become a widely used consumer OS kernel when users and developers have absolutely no idea it's there, and it's thoroughly hidden under many layers of abstraction.
Google could silently replace the Linux kernel with some other kernel, and Android users and developers would have no idea it had even happened. That just goes to show how irrelevant Linux is within the Android ecosystem. Yeah, it's present, but nobody cares that it's present.
We may actually see a kernel replacement along those lines happen, with Google Fuchsia being in the works.
Linux contributes almost nothing to Android's success. Android could have been just as much of a success if they had used the NetBSD kernel or some other kernel instead. The success of Android is in its application framework and its userland apps, which have nothing to do with Linux at all.
Android shows exactly what needs to happen if Linux does want to be successful on desktops and laptops. Almost all of the GNU utilities, X, Wayland, GNOME, GTK+, systemd, PulseAudio, and other open source software will need to be thrown out and replaced with a far more cohesive and sane userland stack.
Analogy time:
McDonalds serves _billions._ No one is arguing that their quantity is even remotely comparably to quality. McDonalds excels at selling A LOT of cheap, shit food.
Likewise, the analogy to Operating Systems on the desktop is applicable:
* Windows = Quantity
* Linux = Quality
Although I would argue that Linux on the Desktop was NEVER about quantity, but about Freedom. Quality was always an afterthought.
Linux has failed to gain any serious traction on the desktop because:
1. "Windows is Good Enough" and "Momentum"
a) Disrupting the Windows desktop is almost impossible because the _casual_ Windows user doesn't give a fuck about freedom.
b) Likewise, game developers don't give a fuck about Linux because there is (almost) zero money in compared to Windows. Everyone and their dog is chasing after the "Fee-to-Play" bullshit model because whales and dolphins are where the _real_ money is.
2. Linux has never had anyone understand _good_ UI design.
Linux's core philosophy has aways been to copy what others are doing. What innovation it has done was never in the GUI space. The complete clusterfucks of KDE and GNOME, year and year, prove that they people are out of touch with Function and instead focus on Form at the expense of Function.
3. There is no one to enforce "standards"
Windows succeeded as game machines because everyone bought into the DirectX bullshit. And while we can debate the politics of Microsoft all day, the fact remains that there is nothing equivalent on the Linux side. The LSB, Linux Base Standard, is a step in the right direction, but there needs to be _standard_ APIs _across_ kernel version. The clusterfuck of PulseAudio is another example. Linux has "too many chefs in the kitchen with the majority re-inventing the oven". Instead we get half-assed implementations of everyone doing things their own way because "the other guys suck."
OpenGL ES has been a success because it provided a _standard_ across almost every device. Apple has always had Not-Invented-Here syndrome so they, like MS, have been pushing their proprietary APIs. If developers AND _users_ weren't morons they would _insist_ on ONE API across EVERY platform. But again, most people don't give a fuck about doing things "right" so we end with a shitty heterogeneous environment instead of a homogenous environment where implementation is held accountable to a the design specifications.
Using a bullshit metric of "popularity" as success nullifies the facts where Linux HAS been successful:
* Gee, 99.6% of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world run Linux. /sarcasm I wish I could "fail" like that!
* Android has over 2 BILLION devices, again running Linux. /sarcasm Again, I wish I could "fail" like that.
I've been using Linux off and on since the Slackware days. These days I have a dedicated Linux box, (along with Windows and OSX machines.) The fact of the matter is that _every_ Operating System sucks -- no one cares about switching from one crappy OS to another crappy OS. There are always strengths and weaknesses of every platform.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are NOT interested in freedom. All they care about is profit and their hawking their proprietary crap. NOTHING will ever change until _everyone_ else decides there needs to be a better system and I don't ever see that happening. The problem is no one has the time, money, expertise, or status to pull this off, so we are stuck with crappy OS's that "sort of" do the job but suck in some way or another.
The rest of us just go back to using these crappy platforms complaining about it. :-/
The only way that Linux has advanced in usability is by copying Windows and Mac features.
Video Drivers
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
At least for me..
Starts about 35 ~ 40
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
OSX is based on BSD, does that count?
Philosophically, soft of. People really wanted *nix on personal computers. Few cared about the politics, the "cause", behind Linux; they just wanted *nix in the practical sense. Which is why some switched(*) to Mac OS X. It provided *nix along side a desktop with an ecosystem of commercial applications.
... Linux will likely continue to dominate there. But the "desktop" ... we'll likely be making "year of the Linux desktop" jokes for quite some time.
Today we also have the "Windows Subsystem for Linux" which essentially gives you Linux along side the dominant desktop environment and the dominant ecosystem of commercial applications. More will switch(*), people who never cared much for the politics, people who just wanted *nix.
(*) "Switch" being used in a figurative sense since many Linux users never really "switched". They dual booted. Between macOS and the Windows Subsystem for Linux, dual booting isn't all that necessary anymore.
Now for that headless servers in the data center, the closet, or the AWS or Google cloud server instance
I was there the first time the "year of Linux on the desktop" was run up a jury-rigged flag pole.
It puts me in mind of Olbermann's fifty phrases of Trump "becoming" presidential.
Never believed it the first time, nor any of the times thereafter.
Olbermann shtick is to become so repetitive as to render himself completely unlistenable to anyone with access to a supplemental news source. I think he regards this grinding hatchet job as a form of insistent emphasis. It's perhaps also why the sound bite on his media channel features a heavy drum. Case in point, I didn't even finish the above clip. But the passage I quoted is excellent, which is why I keep going back, for the brief moments when Olbermann punches through this endless brow beating.
Olbermann is right about this. Trump successfully reads off a teleprompter for an entire thirty minutes, and five minutes later many in the media proclaim a shotgun marriage to an elf princess, and the reclamation of Elendil's throne consummated. True, Aragorn did put his hand on the same Saudi orb, but then again he also killed some living, breathing Uruk-hai. Advantage, Aragorn.
The year of Linux on the desktop is a turtle race with Trump becoming presidential. Always has been, always will be.
Same media dunce caps, to a mortal certainty.
Indeed, Elrond, we've now had megapixel screen buffers for an age of men.
Man, can't imagine what mystic wandering in the wilderness might have invented that bodge. Yes, and he was also subject to an endless litany of premature coronation (one suspects trigger-happy journalism interns vying for first post), until finally breaking through with the iPhone.
2007: official year of Apple finally kicking everyone's ass, after thirty years of overblown self-aggrandizement.
There's the rub: once in a long while, a princess finally does kiss the right frog.
> more rapid degradation of the operating system as it tries harder to cater to everybody.
That would have been a reasonable prediction 30 years ago. For the last couple decades, almost all supercomputers have used Linux, as have many embedded systems, most web servers, and now most phones / mobile devices use Linux, each with an appropriate UI on top. The fact is, Linux does suit a vast array of very different use cases, and that has worked out very well.
One reason that has worked well is new use cases, such as mobile and cloud. When there was suddenly a need for an operating system well-suited to run the hardware cloud hosts, Amazon and others choose the OS that had already been proven to be quite flexible, and made it even more flexible as they extended it's usefulness in that role. When the Android team needed as OS (not GUI shell) well-suited for advanced mobile devices, they chose Linux because it had been proven to be flexible. They made it even more flexible. So it's a cycle. The more different uses Linux is put to, the more flexible and modular it becomes, making it well suited to applications that don't even exist yet.
... with a format. Basically every year they say it's the year of Linux on the desktop.
Only a minuscule percentage of the potential market actually does anything which requires a real PC. Of those people, the vast majority of home users will never edit a video, or compile a program
With AP Computer Science becoming more common in high schools, I expect more people to end up compiling a program sometime in their lives. What are CS students supposed to use if not a PC? A phone with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, an HDMI or Chromecast output to a TV, and an SSH connection to a rented server?
Desktops as we know them are going away. We are seeing a trend toward increased reliance on mobile devices, even at the desk.
There are two main operating systems on those mobile devices, iOS and Android. Android has about an 80-85% share of the mobile market worldwide. iOS is around 12-18%, depending on who's doing the study.
Five times as many mobile devices as PCs are sold each year.
Android has, at its base, a Linux kernel. Sure, the hardware doesn't look anything like a desktop machine; Android doesn't look like a traditional Linux distribution; the update and application management is different; and the applications are different, but it's still Linux.
When Android and ChromeOS devices become the platform of choice, we will have achieved the Year of Linux on the Desktop. Maybe we already have.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
There is a lot of truth to that. The article mentions business desktop and consumer desktop.
Microsoft is still very popular on business desktops, of course. Windows on the desktop is NOT popular with consumers. Consumers have largely left the Windows desktop, moving to Android. Even if you leave out iPhone, people bought more Android devices last year than the total sales of Windows devices by both business and consumers combined. For consumers, Android and the mobile form factor are three to four times more popular than the Windows desktop.
Of course, with the UI on Android, some of the storage and processing is being done on the server - by Linux. What consumers use is a Linux-based product which communicates to other Linux-based systems.
While saying "Windows is most popular on the desktop" is technically true, it's a lot like saying "David Duke is popular with the KKK". True, but that doesn't mean that either Windows or David Duke are well-liked.
I am a long-time Linux user, starting back when I was in high school in the late 90s. I used it exclusively through college (wrote all my papers in LaTeX), and for many years of my adult life. Several years ago, when I had my first child, I realized that even though I really enjoyed endlessly tweaking and configuring all my Linux systems, I simply didn't have time for it. So until very recently, I've been using Windows 7.
Now my kids, though still young, are past the epic time-drain of baby-/infant-hood. Furthermore, as it's been several years, I was curious to see how Linux has evolved for desktop use. (Note that, during this Linux desktop hiatus, I continued to run it on my servers, and admin it professionally for my job.) All that, combined with a little hardware shuffle, caused me to revisit Linux for my desktop. I don't plan to leave it just yet, but there are times when I wonder if I made the right choice.
The biggest problem is that I find things still don't "just work". Some examples in my case:
And then there are the little things. I still buy audio CDs, though I do rip them to FLAC. Under Windows, ExactAudioCopy was wonderful. I know there are no shortage of ripping tools under Linux, but I've yet to find one that "just works" as comprehensively as EAC. Recently I've purchased a bunch of two-CD sets. I like to merge the contents of both discs into one folder and one contiguous numbering scheme (e.g. 1-17 instead of 1-9 and 1-8). EAC would do that after clicking on a checkbox and indicating the new starting number. Haven't found a tool that does that in Linux yet. So I not only have to rename all the FLAC files, but edit their metadata as well (since the metadata contains TRACKNUMBER and TRACKTOTAL fields).
In the sp
I have trouble understanding why anyone would actually want to devote resources to this. Linux is extremely, extremely, extremely awesome for the web applications my company deploys (LAMP, Django, bizarre Java applications.) I don't understand why there would be a push to make Linux into a viable desktop solution, when it is already an extremely viable server solution. It's also extremely viable for phones, and for embedded applications. What, are you going to be running Windows to control your microcontroller?
This to me seems like two things:
1.) A slow news day.
2.) Linux trying to be something that it's not, instead of people appreciating what it is.
1.) Firefox has driven itself off a cliff in an attempt to be the better Chrome. We had a useful browser that worked on many different platforms; we now have something that doesn't even work with its own plugins from a generation ago.
2.) Video drivers. We had this one down with Flgrx (or whatever it was called) with AMD, and Nvidia wasn't half bad; the current set of open-source drivers for cards like the RX480 is deplorable (We can do 4K @60Hz in Windows, but not in Linux....). And the drivers are STILL having issues where there is an Intel iGPU and a dGPU (at least of an AMD origin).
In short, things have gotten worse on the Linux platform, and it's not because MS changed the secret sauce again; it's because of apathy and stupidity.
By then replacement eyes with FM radios installed will be easily available.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
Seriously, I don't care any more. I have been using Linux as my only desktop (KDE) for years and it works for me. I don't have the problems with graphics/wireless/bluetooth or whatever that others will inevitably post - it works for me. I have to use Windows 7 at work, but I much prefer KDE. I have hardly any experience of Windows 8 or 10, but what little I have, I hated. The last 15+ years have been the Year of Linux on the Desktop for me. I don't care what you use.
Eh?
Consumer have largely left the desktop, period.
Lots of people I know who used to slog around laptops or have a desktop at home now rely entirely on their pocket computer (whatever OS it is running) for everything.
As I see it, it's desktop-vs-pocket, not Windows vs Android: Android is not [intended to be] a desktop operating system.
Kid-proof tablet..
Chromebooks run Linux and they're all over the place.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
.... that "The year of the Linux Desktop" is already here, just as "The Year of the Porsche Car" is.
1. Linux won't run everything that Windows will run, and is not as dumbed-down as Windows is, so the average person who has little to no technical knowledge of computers can't understand Linux, can't be bothered to learn something new, and doesn't have any reason to even try in the first place. Furthermore they don't really care how much Microsoft is datamining them with Windows, invading their privacy, or the fact that Microsoft becomes the de-facto owner of the computer the consumer bought and paid for with their own money, not so long as they can browse the web, send and receive email, and watch cat videos on YouTube.
2. Microsoft is doing everything it can to either kill Linux as a viable alternative, or more lately, subverting, annexing, and otherwise taking over Linux; they want Microsoft to be the only producer of operating systems for computing devices, and they don't care what they have to do to accomplish that.
The Linux community is toxic to any sort of drive to make Linux acceptable or usable as a general purpose it just works desktop device. Look at how everyone collectively frothed at the mouth over pulseaudio. Well guess what, intelligent and seamless audio switching is an actual use case for many on the desktop. Event based service management is also a requirement for a machine that goes in and out of sleep and bounces from network to network. As is some basic crap like trusting that the lock screen will actually lock the computer.
Yet with every change to make Linux desktop friendly the vets feel like they get personally attacked (and to be fair, they are being). The hacker desktop we love is not compatible with the general user desktop case.
Go read Qt's commercial terms,
Maybe YOU should read them. You need a commercial license if you want to produce closed-source proprietary products. You can still sell your product / offer support, etc., without a commercial license, you just have to provide source.
And Qt is not the only game in town.
All I got to say is.. when I launched Civilization 6 on my Linux desktop, it just said 'Error cannot continue.' No other messages.
Which is sad, cuz Factorio runs great and Steam itself runs fine too.
Linux desktop has made huge strides toward usability for anyone, but.. it's not "there" yet. Getting there, getting better every day.
When there is A (singular) company that sells and supports A (singular) Linux, and makes it so easy to use that any (ANY) grandmother can use it, then (maybe) there will be Linux on some desktops. Until that time, Only geeks need apply.
This actually already exists: WOW! Computer (mywowcomputer.com). It's ridiculously expensive for what it is, but I suppose you could call it a proof of concept. I've seen a free distro that amounts to the same thing but don't recall the name.
No, it's not exactly conquering the world.
The year of the Linux desktop has past mostly unnoticed. And the OS is nothing more than a terminal for services. Just got a Chromebook for 130€ to try out this cloud thing. (I'm a 20 year Linux user and my other portable is a MB Air from 2011). The Chromebook concept is amazing. Dirt cheap, boots in seconds, runs for hours on a single charge with a very small battery (ARM system) and is totally idiot safe, usable but the other 99.999% of the population who aren't computer experts like us. Two-factor auth setup with two mouseclicks.
Given, I have to do *everything* with cloud services now (IDE, CI, Testing, Documents, Storage, etc.) and everything is hooked to accounts in the cloud. But as you know, that's not just disadvantage but also comes with huge advantages. Having Travis and Codeanywhere do the setup work for me lets me focus on coding. If the Chromebook gets stolen, I'll disable it remotely and pick up where I left somewhere else. I don't have to think twice about syncing my Smartphone with the stuff I did on the cBook.
Note that this stuff can be used by some kid in the third world aswell. Which is exactly how Google intended it to be.
You have to hand it to Google, when it comes to enablement, they are lightyears ahead of everybody else, including Apple.
Bottom line: The Linux Desktop is long since here and it will take the world in a storm. It's called Chrome OS.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I was a gamer; and also very familiar with the Windows environment since I was the "tech support" for everyone in the neighborhood when I was growing up.
Needless to say I was always impressed with when I had a chance to play with it, I just had no real incentive to switch. Any family member's PC that I work with now usually ends up with a fresh Ubuntu install though; cause most of them just use their PCs/Laptops for Facebook and don't feel like shelling out $$$ for Windows (understandably).
I tend to rant.
Anybody remember Coherent?
Linux is successful. It's in servers, it's embedded in small devices, it's the basis for many smartphones, and it's on lots of desktops (installed those who want it), it gives new life to old hardware, and it's a great choice for non-technical users such as seniors who just want to browse, do email, etc. (Or they can use a tablet which is likely Linux/Android based).
So the question "When is the year of Linux on the desktop?" is now just meant as a put-down, to say that Linux will never really succeed.
But that train has already departed. Sorry, but Linux is a huge success and pointing to its small share of a rapidly dwindling desktop market won't change that.
It will not happen, because the desktop people insist in keeping their heads deep into you-know-where, coming up with the usability monstrosities that are Gnome, KDE and the now-defunct Unity. It is a good thing because that implies that the bad guys will stay focused on Windows (and Mac, to a much smaller extent) while leaving Linux alone. Alternatively, they may focus on the abominable Linux desktops above, and that is a good thing. In the meantime, I have a desktop that does everything I need, it does so efficiently, how I want it, and without much in the way of security risks, when it comes to the desktop itself. Life is good, and will carry on being good, for as long as Linux in the desktop maintains a negligible market share. So, keep up the good work, Gnome and KDE people.
Linux has no exposure in the consumer market. Most people with Android phones don't even realize they have Linux in their pocket.
Consequently, Linux isn't available from PC vendors. They don't think there's a market for it, there's no OS vendor willing/able to make it worth their while, Microsoft aggressively forces OEMs to choose between Windows and anything else, and OEMs know anyone looking for such a machine won't tolerate the bloatware they love to include (which doesn't exist anyway).
Then there's hardware support issues, mainly Video. The Linux desktop needs a breach point into the consumer market, the most likely candidate is a Linux gaming console (looking at you, Steam).
Are you kidding me? On-screen keyboards flip out if you're a fast typist. I can have my physical keyboard sounding like it's a musical instrument with minimal trouble, but I try typing those kinds of speeds on an on-screen keyboard and suddenly letters drop out and autocowreckt joins in by guessing (very wrongly) what letters I 'obviously meant' to have hit. It gets worse if any amount of technical terms turn up.
It's not really about physical age, glasses take care of that. When you're not at work and away from a desktop what activity that requires continually staring at a small screen is better than the alternatives?
Well, that's hardly a "consumer level" Linux install -- but ignoring that, I can easily point to similar examples on literally every OS I've ever used.
Always.
Do you have ESP?
THere is a linux desktop, it's called chromium and it's in widespread use, especially in schools
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
why would *I* move to the cloud? I have a laptop.
1) By virtue of reading slashdot, you are a geeky weirdo, not a typical user. You'll never want to move to the cloud, until you become like your parents. You'll be the reason Linux will become the desktop OS of the year (forever actually).
2) You can operate on the cloud with a laptop. Its called a chromebook. Yeah, for those who care, some form of wireless network service will be ubiquitous for urban areas.
Why would I move to the cloud?
To not deal with Microsoft's haphazard software security updates. For your data to be slightly more secure once you move to cloud computing. Because one day a cloud service will offer the average user advantages over standalone OSs, like unlimited, ease of use backup of data, better price for computing services than a standalone PC (which seems to need bimonthly updates), and the whole "system" doesn't go obsolete, requiring repurchasing every few years.
And after the majority of users have moved to cloud services, one day you won't be able to use your credit ID to buy stuff, because the vendors on the internet will only want to sell stuff through the "secure" cloud. The gamers have long ago moved to cloud, because its costs nothing to send a video stream to your screen, while the cloud has preprocessed that gamer stream with its 1M of GPU units per cents of gamer time, and the user will never have to dick around with buying video cards and video card settings. You remember how long ago, EA Sports stopped selling a version of Madden Football to PCs? That'll happen for the cloud as well for other games. Besides, no consumer discrete GPU will be able to manage the imaging for your hologram room, where you'll do all your gaming and visiting distant friends and relatives.
Only neckbeards, survivalist whackjobs, and Alex Jones fans will want to have their own computing box they "control".
In a foreign country with absurd internet costs ...
There will always be people who want to go to a shithole and have internet access. Those people will have laptops running linux. Normal (non-rural) people will live at home, and the cloud will be ubiquitous, and they won't even realize that wireless networking services will be required to get their "screen" to work.
Microsoft is motivated to do this, but right now, the business sector is the only customer that really grasps the potential ROI. Once they're on board and datacenters and APIs are in place, Microsoft will figure out cheap ways to absorb the consumer market. If they don't, some company in India or China eventually will.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
With alot of users moving away from desktops and going for mobile devices, I'm not sure why anyone would still care about such a target. Given the amount of Android devices out there, Linux seems to be doing pretty damn well in that market, and I'll bet Android devices outnumber desktop computers these days
Is there still a consumer desktop market? The focus seems to be on mobile devices.
Qt is licensed under the LGPL.
If you dynamically link to the Qt libraries, you can sell your closed-source proprietary products without having to pay for a commercial license or share your source.
If you statically link to the Qt libraries, then you are required to either pay for a commercial license or share your source.
Apple's macOS X is quickly gaining ground among business customers and designers, and is already ahead of Linux.
wow, macOS is "ALREADY" ahead of Linux? That's like saying computers can already be made in laptop form so they needn't be plugged in anymore. Technically correct, but very misleading in its implication that what's being discussed is either very recent or obscure. MacOS being much more used than linux on the desktop is news from, oh, 30 years ago?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
So why wasn't the first thing you did having your cow-orker install a less user-hostile editor such as nano (my personal favorite, but YMMV) and use that instead? You know the old saying, "It's a poor workman who blames his tools."
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In the meantime there is Oracle and Valve.
Your entire argument is MORONIC. The lesser version of the GPL does NOTHING to dissuade commercial developers. If anything, it accelerates their work on alternate platforms like game consoles. That was a thing even before the "Year of Linux" was a thing.
People who charge more for their software than the cost of your physical dwelling have no problem with the GPL and have been fine with it for a very long time.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> That's fine. You keep sharing, and large commercial devs will keep producing for Windows and the Mac, and your "year of the linux desktop" will keep retreating into the future.
Seriously? Where are you posting from 1995? Linux has been running expensive commercial software for about 20 years. It's been the reference platform for Oracle for nearly that long.
It's not just something that big companies "merely tolerate" but something they prefer.
The unhinged detached from all reality insanity of your post simply boggles the mind.
Windows software companies care about market share. That's why they ever pay any attention to Macs. That's also why they STOPPED paying attention to Macs before.
It has nothing to do with this "blast from the past" viral nonsense.
There are some real dinosaurs posting in here. I'm surprised I'm the one in the position to say that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Go read Qt's commercial terms,
Maybe YOU should read them. You need a commercial license if you want to produce closed-source proprietary products. You can still sell your product / offer support, etc., without a commercial license, you just have to provide source.
And Qt is not the only game in town.
Which is not true. I worked for a small company selling close source Qt applications. We started out using the LGPL version of Qt 4.3 and once we made enough revenue we switched to the commercial license so that we could use some of their close source libraries. We used v4.3 through v5.5 and the quality and support was excellent. Going from 4.x to 5.x was painless so claims that the product is poorly supported are bunk.
Linux hasn't been any harder to use than Windows for years.
I laughed out loud when I saw this. I just spend 30 minutes trying to get mp3's to play on Ubuntu (no, I never figured it out).
I don't respond to AC's.
Largely modern OS's don't matter. 95% of what most people do is through the web browser, and even web browsers don't matter that much because of HTML5. HTML5 makes the OS war pointless. For the most part, the vast majority of computers are barely much more that terminals to get online for most people. (This is literally Google's whole business plan and the point of ChromeOS.) Sure *YOU* really, really, really need your own something-something software. That's fine. But most people could adopt ChromeOS and not really care that much.
TBH I think linux distros just missed the boat. I remember back when many things didn't 'just work' and digging in text config files was frustrating when many things were stubbornly undocumented. That might be not be the case now but... too late?
Same as before, though HUGE strides have been made. I'm writing this from Linux Mint as I speak. It's still not 100% plug and play (want to use DisplayPort without the screen randomly going off, or use multiple monitors easily without editing text files? HAHAHAHA NOOB). Also some proprietary software just won't work on it, like some vpn's or apps that are made for Mac OS and Windows (but not Linux). So while people like me use and love it (and wish some things will continue to get easier), there are still plenty of people who won't use it because it'd mean giving up a rare piece of software they cannot do without (and don't want to chance using WINE with), or need Windows or a Mac for work.
It still has come such a long way. It's even possible with Steam (and a non greedy WM like XFCE instead of Gnome, Cinnamon, or KDE) to have a stable and well performing gaming experience, which is awesome.
linux desktop is the same shit since i first tried it in 1999
In 1997 Word Perfect still had a shot; MS Word was still really crap; that was my point-- if everything had coalesced with Linux not being a pain back then and Corel embracing Linux and...
They really needed Lotus Notes though to make it work. IBM wasn't at the right point then, and AmiPro was a good step down from WP.
And count me as someone who has only recently gotten over WP's Reveal Codes. It finally went away when I learned you could add a page break to within the paragraph formatting. Dumb ass convention, but why fight it...
Because what are the options here now? Windows 10 and MacOS. Spy ware and a fortune for closed hardware. Two corporations who, in different ways, think you do not own your own computer.
That is why some of us use Linux on the desktop and wish that making that painless would interest someone in Linux-land.
I also wish the British Museum would return all those things to the countries the British stole them from.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Windows 10 is pretty terrible. I support Windows 7, 8, and 10 for my parents' office (they are the ONLY people I'll do this kind of system support for.) I 100% agree with you that Windows 10 is horrible for supporting, at all, for all applications, except MAYBE video games.
I use Windows 7, and plan to until it end-of-life's out. You have until 2020 there. I think there is a Windows 8 revision that allows me to turn off all their annoying clippy touch screen crap (8.1?) that I'll try and use after Windows 7 isn't a viable option. I also use a ridiculously expensive Macbook Pro, which only made sense due to numerous iOS development contracts.
I have used Linux as a primary desktop, during the days of Gentoo. I am very, very, very grateful for this terrible experience, since it turned me into a pretty decent Linux system administrator. What I generally do is run Ubuntu inside a VM for all actual work, and use Chrome inside Windows 7, or OS X, for posting to slashdot. If I had no money, I'd run Ubuntu as a primary desktop on junk machines. This would effectively be a time-for-money trade-off.
The nice thing about this is that if someone really wants to make this happen, they can. However, I can think of about 10,000 things I would rather write software for than making Ubuntu more user friendly. I also see basically zero economic reason for any of the big corporate backers to do this either.
Mostly, I have trouble understanding why this is a general goal. I can understand why individuals in certain circumstances would want this, but as a general solution, I still don't understand. If you really want to, you can run Linux as a desktop. For most people, it's not their best option.
oh noes! We don't have that!
Quick, what do I sudo apt-get to go get it?
MY "Year of Linux" was 1998.
I paid $25 for a paper back book title "Learn Linux in 24 Hours", by Bill Brush. It had a RH 5.0 CD in the back. My Sony VAIO desktop was crashing several times an hour running Win95. I thought Sony's hardware was trash. However, running RH5.0 on it and the crashing ceased. The hardware was good. Win95 was trash.
I guess I'm a slow learner. It took me about 30 hours to convert from Windows think to Linux think, but the mouse worked the same as it did in Win3.11FWG. So, if the mouse is giving you a hard time in Windows don't bother switching to Linux.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
So which Windows or Mac OS when you point to the task bar allows you to scroll through open windows with the scroll wheel on your mouse?
The Linux desktop has accomplished 80% of what is needed to become a real competitor to Windows. It has some nice UIs and plenty of tools, if you're a tinkerer, anyway. But for the masses of people who barely know how to create a shortcut on their desktop, that last 20% is a huge effort.
Windows is far from perfect. But features like...plug in a new printer or scanner and it just knows what to do--that's really important, and takes a huge amount of effort to make it happen. It's so much effort that only the money brought to a problem by commercial interests can possibly come up with the money or time to pay for it.
The Linux world thinks that it's enough to get things to work, with "just a little configuration." That works fine for Linux enthusiasts. But until Grandma can do it herself, Linux won't be on everybody's desktop.
> Consumer have largely left the desktop, period.
Exactly. (Note my original subject line, "consumers left the desktop".)
> As I see it, it's desktop-vs-pocket, not Windows vs Android
Yes, Windows is popular on the desktop like Wichita brand is the most popular buggy whip.
What I didn't say in my earlier post is that consumers did NOT move from Windows desktops to Windows Phone. They left the desktop AND Windows behind, replacing them with phones/tablets and Android.
An Oldskool kernel hacker once said: BEEN THERE, TRIED THAT, DIDN'T WORK, THREW IT IN THE BIN. /bin as where all the SORT OF WORKS programs go, to be marshalled by our friend the great GNU BASH.
Sometimes I see
The message above purporting to be from me IS GENUINE. The 'was I pwned' bit is a copy and paste of the first thing on my screen that is pissing me off. Slashdot is friend, and any slashdot user is friend of friend. Please do not abuse my trust, since I wish to teach the new school slashdotters about the old slashdot effect. We have a simple game to play:
MD5 is so broken it cannot hash the word BROKEN without getting PWND.
Now SHA256 is a 128bit hash with a 256bit output. That means it's QUANTUM MECHANICAL PHASE SPACE occupies at most 1/2**128 of its output space. This makes it an interesting test case.
The PASS THIS WORD HASHING GAME.
Write a letter. Split it into 128bit chunks. Pass each chunk though SHA256. Split the output into 64bit chunks (exercise: can you count how any chunks that is? If not then perhaps you should put down the beer and go to bed.)
Take the SHA256 outputs from above, base64 them. Split into 128bit (char x[16]) chunks. Go to random web pages and sign up as new user, and use these outputs as passwords, and fragments of the message as entries to other boxes.
How long before the weight of humanity saturates the 128bit QUANTUM SEARCH SPACE? (The Quantum Search Space is the inverse image of the word Alive under the mapping X -> { Dead, Alive } for those who grok maths.)
John The#MooStyleMaster (Cult of the New Age Bull on Youtube).
John_Chalisque
that linux is still an unrefined, fragmented mess that has not got the professional, polished software support the others got ( niche cases aside - e.g. to take the most prominent example: gimp and the likes are a far cry from photoshop). if you change that, you give up everything that makes linux linux - and then you get osx. itâs just never going to happen.
The Year of Linux on the Desktop, will be when VM software is advanced enough to allow seamless use of ALL of the computers hardware (yes, I'm including full graphics card capabilities here...) - even to the most idiotic and non-technical end-user - for a Windows install in a VM, and with no performance loss whatsoever. That's when you'll see 'The Year of Linux on the Desktop' - when it can seamlessly co-exist with Windows, with ZERO drawbacks, and ZERO hitches/catches.
you can walk into any PC store and buy a Linux desktop or laptop (buying online isn't enough) Hardware (wifi dongles, printers, scanners, etc) needs to come pre-supporting Linux and not spends hours trawling forums for advice. Also upgrading the distro shouldn't lose hardware support (happens a lot with WiFi cards and dongles) Microsoft Office needs to work on Linux (yes LibreOffice can do lots of things but it isn't up to the standard of MS, spreadsheet tables and charts are old fashioned looking, pivot tables aren't up to scratch). Expecting lits of fanboi rants but these are the things we need to make Linux popular to the ordinary family. If you are a student and using MSO in class switching to LO at home isn't feasible, the same if you are working on a project at work and need to carry on working at home, LO isn't going to cut it. At one stage I think LO and OpenOffice were close in functionality to MSO but they lost out, I dunno if they can catch up now. Most other apps are good enough
"sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras" you're welcome :-)
Well, I for one am writing this on one of our two family Tuxedo computers, which came with Ubuntu Mate preinstalled, and I can say I don't even know what GRUB is...
Herve S.