It's disappointing that these companies are perfectly happy to use it for their own wealth creation strategy, but have no interest in giving back and furthering the ecosystem.
Hardly a dumpster fire, moving to Linux from Windows is by far the best thing I’ve done for my work and sanity using a computer. For macOS users might be less of a reason, but aside from video editing workflow, has been a smooth process, and highly recommended for devs to give it another go.
I'd argue, that given the right hardware (I'd go with a Framework anytime again) and the right setup in terms ox *nix, I am happy to never touch a MB Pro (or any Mac) again in my life.
Absolutely. Framework laptop and a custom-built desktop each running Fedora, has been a wonderful experience. If I could have any setup I wanted with no consideration of cost, I would choose this one.
Distributing for linux sucks. There are dozen different ways to install applications and not a single format could be installed by say top 5 distro. I was hopeful for Snap, but it is awful in my experience. Unless the package is managed by the distribution itself, installing it sucks. e.g. Here is link for chromium binaries for linux[1].
Flatpak is sandboxed, which is both a good thing and bad thing. e.g. Claude won't be able to provide spotlight like interface, or have computer control.
Tried OpenSUSE recently. They describe 3 different ways on how to install Nvidia drivers in their docs. Not a single worked, had to install manually (which kinds of beats the entire purpose of using a rolling distro).
Could try something else but seem but slightly like a waste of time. Also the DE situation seems pretty bad... KDE would seem alright but its buggy and unpolished. Gnome is an abomination designed for tablets (which aren't even a thing on Linux).
For laptop, I personally don't know, only did a brief test on my backup system and seemed fine. However, Linux + Nvidia desktop has been good to me so far through many driver upgrades all through the standard 22.04 repositories (PopOS!, AMD AM4 Ryzen + 4070). Games work, dev tooling is amazing, and its _quiet_. I don't mean audibly, I mean process/notifications wise. On Windows my fans would spin up when I had nothing running, and it was some BS windows service I never wanted or used (telemetry, indexing, other), or MS trying to sell me something. PopOS! is lightning fast as I don't want fancy animations, just highly responsive computing.
If I was to go with a laptop (I doubt I will switch), I'd go with a Framework or System76.
Don’t use nvidia with Linux if you want easy. That’s nvidia’s problem. I use Fedora/gnome/phosh on a tablet and it’s getting better every day. Already meets my video tablet needs and could do office and games etc.
Linux Desktop isn't perfect, but it's in no way a dumpster fire. I'm much happier using Linux than any other viable alternative. Your experience clearly differs, but I personally have very few complaints at this point. Calling it a dumpster fire is extreme hyperbole.
I'm hoping they're incentivized to support Linux just based on the developer market share of Linux. The StackOverflow developer survey looks like it unfortunately allows people to choose multiple options which devalues the results and obscures the actual numbers, but at the top level 27% of developers are using Ubuntu desktop.
> The StackOverflow developer survey looks like it unfortunately allows people to choose multiple options which devalues the results and obscures the actual numbers
But how would you capture the situation when people are using both linux and Mac ? I for example have a good mini PC which run Linux and a MBP. I use both depending on where I'm (I mostly work from home). I even have a windows machine dedicated to gaming (not that it matters here).
Yeah, this is why I said it devalued the usefulness of the stat.
It goes both ways though. There are people who checked that they use Ubuntu when they're on Mac or Windows the majority of the time, but there are also people that checked they're on Debian which isn't feeding into the Ubuntu top line number. I'm not sure which way this is going to bias it -- I could see the number being much higher or much lower. Debian was at 9.8% (iirc) for instance, and I don't imagine there are many people using both Ubuntu/Debian for desktop usage.
> but at the top level 27% of developers are using Ubuntu desktop.
That seems very unlikely. The sample is of course probably extremely unrepresentative. Also I wouldn't be surprised if selection bias might have a significant effect (a lot of Linux users can't help but try and publicize the fact even if nobody is asking, so imagine what they do when someone does ask... Windows is likely the opposite).
I'm sure stack overflow is a biased subset of users, and I imagine the people that fill out tech surveys are going to be more likely to use Linux. But it's the best data source on this that I know of. Regardless of the exact market share percent, I think it's a reasonable assumption that there are millions of developers using it as a desktop OS.
Along those lines too, I don't have evidence but I'd bet that the type of developer who uses Linux is more likely to integrate new tech like LLM's into their workflow than someone whose on Windows.
99% of the time its always someone who has never actually used a proper Linux desktop OS lol and/or someone who couldnt even figure out how to list files on a Linux terminal.
