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Linux market share passes 4% for first time; macOS dominance declines
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Linux
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Music and graphic art software is the only advantage I can find for MacOS over Linux at this point. I love the Apple silicon but I don't see that being a long term advantage.
Stability and UI/UX are still lightyears ahead in Mac, and to some extent Windows. Don't get me wrong, they suck for lots of reasons, but I think Linux has a lot of catching up to do to be as usable as Mac/Windows for the ordinary user.
I think standardizing package formats, and more mature desktop managers and proprietary drivers will go a long way to fixing that though.
People find Windows easier to use because they are used to the quirks. Of course you shouldn't let a beginner try Arch, but there are plenty of beginner friendly distros. The complications often come from installing Linux in the first place but the average user will have just as much trouble installing Windows.
I think most users dont install windows period. It just comes with the computer. And if it breaks, they get a new one. Thats it.
Yes, that's my point. If people could buy Linux PCs at Best Buy or Walmart, most of them would get on with it just fine.
Agreed.
Agree. Windows has almost a forty year “quirk bake-in”. All your relatives and non-savvy friends are NOT going to learn anything new (even mac) if they can help it.
The more droolproof linux can be the easier it will be adopted. Whether or not it mimics windows is a choice, but either way we’re losing computer literacy instead of everyone being computer literate. Sadly.
It’s not even that.
By and large, most industry standard softwares are only available on Windows and macOS. Take word processing for example. It doesn’t matter if there are open source alternatives that gets it 95% of the way there. Companies by and large would not want to run the risk of that last 5% (1%, 0.01% doesn’t matter) creating a situation where there’s misunderstanding with another business entity. Companies will by and large continue to purchase and expect their employees to use these standard softwares. People will by and large continue to train themselves to use these softwares so they have employable skills so they can put food on the table.
No one cares about how easy or hard it is to install something. IT (or local brick and mortar computer retailer) takes care of all that. Whether or not it is compatible with consistently making money / putting food on the table is way more important.
Until we have Microsoft Office for Linux; Adobe Creative Suite for Linux; Autodeks AutoCAD for Linux; etc etc. not even the janky “Microsoft Office for Mac” little cousin implementation but proper actual first party for Linux releases, it is unlikely we’ll see competitive level of Linux desktop adoption.
I think Linux still prioritizes the command-line for a lot of config/setup, which can be extremely daunting for new users. In addition, there are also a million options for everything, which is great for freedom, but really confusing for newbies.
I should note that both of these things are amazing pluses for me as a power user/developer.
Have you tried Mint or something similar? You can absolutely run and install it without using the command line.
Yes but the more refined and simple it can be the better. Mint or otherwise.
I've been toying with Fedora Kinoite on a VM. Haven't opened the terminal even once. This might actually be the path for fast adoption.
I only ran Mint for a bit, but from what I've heard, it does a pretty good job with sane defaults and keeping things simple.
I'm talking more about the fact that when things break (as they always do), the easiest way to fix it is via the command line. It's something I'm super comfortable with, having used *nix systems for more than 20 years, but i think even my very smart, technically inclined friend would be frustrated if he had to do it.
For instance, I installed Debian recently, and since I wanted luks disk encryption and dual boot, I had to very carefully set up the partitions in the installer, and the interface was frankly atrocious. I was very nervous about accidentally nuking the wrong partition, unlike with a Windows install where this is pretty much impossible.
Then, of course, the Nouveau drivers didn't like my 4090, so on the first boot I had a blank screen (no signal), until grub timed out into a console. For some reason I was then thrown into a tty, so I had to
startx, install the proprietary Nvidia drivers, tweak grub to pass some kernel parameters till I got back to a semi-stable boot. Oh, and I also had to get a newer kernel and nvidia drivers from backports, since the Debian packages are ancient.I do realize that maybe Mint packages the latest proprietary nvidia drivers during the install, so maybe I would have avoided those particular issues, and I'm not sure how good Mint's partitioning interface in the installer is.
Maybe Linux will work out of the box for a majority of users and they'll never have to encounter the command line, but I'm skeptical.
What is your definition of stability lol
Windows crashes are standard... Linux are pretty rare. At least in my exp
Windows doesn't crash at all. Even if your GPU crashes, Windows will just blink, reload the driver and you'll be none the wiser that something has happened.
Well, in my case stability refers to grub display loading at all :)
I installed Debian on my PC with an RTX 4090 and it just refuses to load the grub display on first boot (grub loads, but there's no DisplayPort signal). I was able to get it working by switching to the latest stable backports kernel and proprietary Nvidia drivers, but then it stopped working again and now I have to figure out how to fix it.
I don't mind this at all, and I'm even enjoying the troubleshooting process, but I think this would have been quite the headache for the average user!
That is a headache... No idea of grub is either
Running 3000 series nvidis with popos drivers that were included zero issue.
I deff had issues with mint tho.
As I discovered, nvidia are infamous in the linux world for causing all sorts of weird issues. Things are getting a lot better now as they seem to be giving a lot more attention to the drivers in linux like they do for Windows. The open-source (Nouveau) drivers in linux seem to work well in many cases (maybe for 3000-series cards too?), but as you get to newer cards like the 4090, the proprietary linux drivers they provide are often needed. It's still huge progress!
I see. Yeah looking forward to 555
Mac is powered by Unix under the hood and uptimes are generally in the months for me personally. Much stability.
~~No it isn't.~~ Oh you probably shouldn’t say macos is UNIX and here’s why, that's not exactly what UNIX means. It's just a certification nowadays and they (Apple) have lost it at least once in the past. You can't be powered by Unix, but you can be Unix compliant or not. It's like a company advertising themselves as "powered by OSHA", that's not how this works ~~pal~~ I hope that helped you learn more pal!.
EDIT: Downvote all you want ~~fuckers~~, that doesn't make me wrong. There hasn't been a UNIX per se since 1995. Anything branded UNIX nowadays is after a certification process established by The Open Group. Want the kicker? Most Linux distributions aren't Unix certified, only POSIX certified if even, because it is ~~a pain in the ass~~ a complex process and costs a ton of money. And what is worse, macOS is UNIX certified only to keep Apple free from litigation, because they ~~fucked~~ bungled PR once and used the UNIX trademark without permission and it was the cheapest way of avoiding a lawsuit. macOS has no other UNIX heritage in their code base, other than a vague relation of the old NeXTSTEP OS with BSD almost 30 years ago.
The National Department of tone policing has altered this comment in order to comply with the Protect the Children and Anonymous Stranger's Feefees Online Act. Profound thanks to officer @TeryVeneno@lemmy.ml for further assistance on tone policing.
Perhaps the issue isn’t your content but your tone, pal.
My tone was very amiable. But idiocy, misinformation and lies shouldn't be rewarded. This idea that bullshit and ignorance has the same merit as verifiable fact because of the tone it is presented with is harmful. Anyways, I know the most offending part of my original comment was the word “no”, that some people on the internet can't tolerate, and I assume the use of “pal”(?). Is being someone's pal derogatory now?
I would like to inform you why your comment's tone was problematic cause most of the issues are not word choice, it's structuring. Your comment intention may have been to be amiable, but to average person your comment reads as snarky and with an air of superiority. This is mainly because the comment it is replying to does not present a view with strong conviction or to argue, they stated something and happened to reveal another belief. They talk about their uptime with macos and happen to reveal they think macos is UNIX.
If you had say said "Oh you probably shouldn't say macos is UNIX and here's why" and then proceeded to give explicit reasons and then ended the comment, it would have ended there with many upvotes. It's the presence of the "Well, um ashkuallyyyy..." structure in your comment along with the "That's not how this works pal" that makes it rude. It's like you're shaming them for not knowing instead of seeking to inform, it's not your usage of the word pal, it's the argumentative negative stance. You could have ended with "I hope that helped you learn more pal!" And everything would have been fine. Positive vs negative. Structure matters. Anyway I hope that helped you learn more pal!
I'm not shaming them for not knowing, I'm shaming them for authoritatively and confidently saying something that is Apple's PR misinformation as if it were the absolute truth in an attempt to undermine another person's comment with blind fanboyism. They were being rude first. If you come with “Well ackhstuallym, Mac is Unix…” then a, “Well, that's wrong.” is a reasonable response.
Gonna be very blunt here, if you mean to say that that comment is "authoritatively and confidently" saying that is misinformation to "undermine another person's comment" I have to tell you are in a very small minority that interpret that comment that way. Most people whom OP is intending to reach would read that comment as having one claim, one anecdote, and one explanation.
The claim is "macos is stable", the anecdote is "months of uptime" and the explanation is "powered by UNIX". And as the main question here is whether the explanation (which I will say is presented as a fact) is said in a manner that represents authoritative blind fanboyism or a casual statement. To preface, I think it's very clear based on my past interactions as well the upvote downvote spread that it is a casual, but factually incorrect statement. OP has experienced months of uptime and stability and attributes this to macos being UNIX under the hood.
While this is a wrong assertation, shaming is the incorrect response if the goal is to correct this misinformation. Shaming does very little to change minds and often leads to people doubling down. You will have no success with this approach. You must inform positively and confidently. Approach them from a perspective, "oh they just don't know, let me help them." Rather than "oh here comes the fanboy again, need to shame this guy". The first approach has had success time and time again and builds community. I assure OP did not seek to undermine the above comment nor did they post misinformation out of blind fanboyism they merely lack knowledge and that's how nearly everyone else in this comment chain read it.
I think just in general you may have an issue with taking things at face value and being blunt, which is not an uncommon issue. I experience this problem myself and my siblings have it worse than me though we worked past it by just learning more about language and talking to people about what they really mean when they say things. Do you happen to be neurodivergent? That's the case for us anyway.
I didn't shame anyone. The pal thing was a half joke. I've also watched this pattern before, it is not a neurodivergent thing, it's an internet thing. When you start a comment with “No”, suddenly the comment has a tone problem. While the exact same comment would not garner any downvotes if only it started with anything else but the word no. Simply because, here's a magic component of language, it is very hard for text to convey tone unambiguously. People can be offended and read all sorts of wrong tone. Regardless of the writer's intention.
That said, my original comment was not meant to be shameful. It was interpreted that way, and it is ok if those who happened to read it at the time chose to interpret it that way. I don't care about downvotes really and it doesn't faze me emotionally in any way. But it is an interaction that would not have caused any sort of inconvenience face to face. “Mac is Unix”, “What? No, it isn't because…” “Oh, ok” But I do agree that on the internet you have to do a peace dance before correcting people. Otherwise you are the one who will be ostracized for bad tone. You want bad tone? go read Linus Torvalds chat logs, then you'll read a veritable asshole over text on full swing.
High DPI screen support in Linux is still troublesome, especially between multiple screens with different DPI/resolution, especially between GTK and Qt programs.
And I haven't played around with Asahi yet, but it'll be hard to top the built-in power/suspend/hibernate/resume behavior and its effect on battery life (especially in being able to just count on it to work if you suspend for days, where it seamlessly switches to hibernate and starts back up very quickly). But on my old Intel MacBook, the battery life difference between MacOS and and Linux is probably two to one. Some of it is Apple's fault for refusing to document certain firmware/hardware features, but the experience is the experience.
Hopefully the success of Steam Deck will push manufacturers to increase their investment into Linux driver development. Having only used Linux servers in the past decade or so, I was pleasantly surprised when I came back to Linux desktop and realized that there were no other drivers (except Nvidia) to install since everything was baked into the kernel! Incredibly convenient!
Yeah, it's difficult to compete with a fully vertically integrated stack like Apple's, and they do lock down things so other software is always at a disadvantage. Hopefully Linux laptops become competitive so this improves.
I struggle to do the same things on the Mac that are trivial in Windows and Linux.
For example, I gave up on Homebrew because it was difficult to install. For one thing, it required me to set up an Apple developer account on my version of MacOS
I don't use my girlfriend's Mac book because the OS is not as intuitive, like I found out recently you have to drag the icon in to install things. Who comes up with this shit?
It just includes as a dependency the Mac command line developer tools, which can be installed pretty easily from what I remember.
And what I like is that it's a normal Unix style shell, with almost all the utilities you'd expect.
I mean that's about 100 times better than Windows' default of running an installer that isn't easily reversible.
On Linux I don't drag icons nor download random shit from my web browser, there's a software center (which I control), and I click install, and then the software is there.
Yes, software that is in a package manager is similarly easy on a Mac. There's an app store, which can be used to install the dependencies for homebrew (which is a good package manager for most of the stuff that Linux package managers maintain, including building stuff from source). Going outside of a package manager is relatively easy (but needs to be enabled, as the defaults basically discourage users from installing software not verified by Apple), but that method of software installation still beats running .exe/.msi installers downloaded from the internet, beats running random shell scripts, probably beats downloading docker containers and flatpaks, and is not that far removed from installing from the AUR or something like pip/conda: you still need to know what you're doing, and you have to trust the source/maintainer. None of that is unique to any operating system, except those that simply don't allow you to install software not reviewed/approved by the manufacturer (Apple mobile devices, Android devices by default).
You often install binaries in Linux by moving them to a directory you can call them from. Which is the same thing MacOs has you do graphically. You can do it on command line as well.
Using a Mac is much the same as Linux. Mac OS is unix and Linux is a copy of unix systems. Your just used to the windows ways that aren’t that good to start with.
Nope, I install them by choosing by package and typing using the proper cli command or clicking install
That's fair, I think Mac's extremely opinionated design that be grating at times. Also, heaven help you if you want to do something non-standard on a Mac, the system fights you every step of the way.
There isn’t much you can’t do on Mac if you use the terminal, much like Linux. It’s much better than the convoluted mess that windows settings is.
True, although you could say the same about Windows PowerShell
Not to the same extent, stuff keeps changing back.
This isn't going to be the standard much longer. Gimp, Krita, and inkscape are extremely well developed and maintained.
Ardour is almost a full replacement for logic and the gap from it and protools is closing quick.
I'm by no means a musician, let alone a professional one, but this part does admittedly suck. The actual sound backend works phenomenally well, especially when combining Pipewire and JACK for audio production, however using Windows-native VST/VST3 plugins is a horrible experience. A lot of mine are either really laggy, or just don't load properly at all
Honestly for art I’ve started using my iPad for it, and transferring the results onto my Mint install. Since mint or gnome (not sure which one) integrates Apple file sharing into the files app.