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?

Comments

Re:I hope not

[bluefoxlucid]

That's the thing: everyone thinks their pet project is going to be super-popular for some reason, without considering the stakeholders. If you want the whole world to use it, then the whole world is your stakeholders.

Occasionally you see this mentality leak when people mention end users being too stupid to know what's good for them and so sticking to Windows (check out RMS). You also see people try to factor the stakeholders in with things like Wine, XPDE, Steam for Linux, and even the installers that boot from Windows instead of repartitioning your disk (low-risk). Nobody's trying to get buy-in in general.

Re:I hope not

[Billly Gates]

It seemed to improve WIndows quality tremendously though over the past 20 years. Windows 7/10 is not WIndows 98/ME by a longshot in terms of BSOD, security, or crashes.

Linux kind of oddly is degrading with SystemD, gnome3, pulse audio, wayland, and so many dependencies that not everyone knows what they are trying to make Linux be the end all be all.

For servers the idea of running FreeBSD is becoming quite popular for this reason.