I hit the wall over the last month. The last version of Firefox that works on my Win7 workstation where I do almost everything is too old for some banking websites to work so I have been using a Win10 tablet for a couple of sites. That is the straw that shifted the pile from Windows to Linux for me. I have had to sort through family member's issues when they upgraded, intentionally or otherwise, to Win11 and from that I know that I have reached the end of the trail that began with PC-DOS 3.0 a long time ago.
Save 2000 dollars (two computers) by using free, lightning fast software that will keep my hardware alive for another decade. Or buy new hardware that Microsoft is going to brick in three years, and will have poor performance the whole time. Tough decision.
Microsoft is tech support for non tech-savvy users at this point.
This is a bit misleading. They have have achieved 1 million downloads of their new version that just released. The downloads coming from Windows machines is not definitive as many Linux users mask their user agent.
Not to mention I'm very skeptical that 780K Windows users just happened to discover a more obscure Linux distro suddenly and switched to it in October while Windows 10 is still supported. This is basically an ad for the OS.
+1, I wonder how many will stick to it. The decision tree is pretty simple :
- are all the devices / soft they use compatible with Linux ?
- do they know enough about Linux to solve their problems ?
I switched my gaming pc to Linux and my only remaining issue that seems over my head is getting proper fancy audio effects or equalizer settings for my headset. Music and games are night and day from windows to linux.
I agree the number of long-term users will not match the download figures.
OTOH, this is an obscure distro so the surprising numbers may be a sign that many more PC owners are trying out a more mainstream distro than Zorin on their old Windows 10 machine.
While the old PC is not actually that old, and in perfect working condition, Linux may have never had as much opportunity for uptake in that regard.
If Windows was my main OS, I'd probably be the same and use Omarchy or something. Thankfully I saw the light and have been using Mac personally for the last 15 years, used Mac at my last workplace for 8 years, but unfortunately my current workplace is Windows only. Makes me lose the will to live - it's so bad!
Saying this as a long time lover of Linux, that's not impressive. Put another way,
0.056 percent of the user based attempted switching to Linux. Whether users stick with it, we'll see.
Fedora 41 KDE had a neat bug on intel graphics where a kernel update caused black screen on boot. no fix, just a “downgrade or update to beta”. those are the issues that truly make linux desktop a non starter for most people.
i use it because i know how to fix it, but linux desktop needs a proper recovery system for normal users to handle that kind of problem.
> i use it because i know how to fix it, but linux desktop needs a proper recovery system for normal users to handle that kind of problem.
We kinda already have that for most immutable distros. Fedora silverblue can "downgrade" to an older Fedora version by booting into an older version. This is not foolproof (you can mess up the btrfs volumes) but it will cover most cases of update induced errors and broken versions.
The only other non-immutable distro with a recovery partition is PopOS, though immutable distros seem like the better option here.
Interesting take. To me it seems like a big leap. Take it from a serial Linux dabbler, about once a year I download 10-20 of the top Linux distros and try them all. I download them on my main machine, which is Windows, and copy them all to USB sticks and try them one by one. If someone is only looking at metrics, 20 people just switched to Linux!
If you’re keen on dabbling, focusing on one and making it your own is a great way to go. You might find that the distro was standing in your way when you start from something more bare metal.
The problem is once you go off the distro's beaten path you quickly find yourself forking things like package managers to add features you want. I guess I could pick one and become a contributor... but I really don't have time so... dabbler I remain.
I do everything on bare metal, but if a distro doesn't work very well "live" by booting to its USB stick, I'm not very likely to install it as an actual inhabitant of a particular PC, whether desktop or laptop.
Turns out if you keep pushing stuff on people, you might open their eyes to the fact that they are not free to choose how they do their computing.
Stallman was right. Choose Free software.
I hit the wall over the last month. The last version of Firefox that works on my Win7 workstation where I do almost everything is too old for some banking websites to work so I have been using a Win10 tablet for a couple of sites. That is the straw that shifted the pile from Windows to Linux for me. I have had to sort through family member's issues when they upgraded, intentionally or otherwise, to Win11 and from that I know that I have reached the end of the trail that began with PC-DOS 3.0 a long time ago.
Save 2000 dollars (two computers) by using free, lightning fast software that will keep my hardware alive for another decade. Or buy new hardware that Microsoft is going to brick in three years, and will have poor performance the whole time. Tough decision.
Microsoft is tech support for non tech-savvy users at this point.
This is a bit misleading. They have have achieved 1 million downloads of their new version that just released. The downloads coming from Windows machines is not definitive as many Linux users mask their user agent.
Not to mention I'm very skeptical that 780K Windows users just happened to discover a more obscure Linux distro suddenly and switched to it in October while Windows 10 is still supported. This is basically an ad for the OS.
+1, I wonder how many will stick to it. The decision tree is pretty simple : - are all the devices / soft they use compatible with Linux ? - do they know enough about Linux to solve their problems ?
If no to either, they will pay for Win11
> do they know enough about Linux to solve their problems ?
But now we have LLMs, which I'm assuming should be very good at troubleshooting computer issues...
Most people don't want to troubleshoot computer issues. Most people don't care about what "OS" is installed.
Linux on the desktop is a nerd wet dream, and you should be aware of that.
I switched my gaming pc to Linux and my only remaining issue that seems over my head is getting proper fancy audio effects or equalizer settings for my headset. Music and games are night and day from windows to linux.
Agree. This is a publicity stunt for an irrelevant distro practically nobody even heard about before this.
I agree the number of long-term users will not match the download figures.
OTOH, this is an obscure distro so the surprising numbers may be a sign that many more PC owners are trying out a more mainstream distro than Zorin on their old Windows 10 machine.
While the old PC is not actually that old, and in perfect working condition, Linux may have never had as much opportunity for uptake in that regard.
I do not even trust the download figures.
If Windows was my main OS, I'd probably be the same and use Omarchy or something. Thankfully I saw the light and have been using Mac personally for the last 15 years, used Mac at my last workplace for 8 years, but unfortunately my current workplace is Windows only. Makes me lose the will to live - it's so bad!
Maybe the way to really hit windows is to put pressure on the gaming companies to support steam os
Saying this as a long time lover of Linux, that's not impressive. Put another way, 0.056 percent of the user based attempted switching to Linux. Whether users stick with it, we'll see.
Probably because of the system requirements
Fedora 41 KDE had a neat bug on intel graphics where a kernel update caused black screen on boot. no fix, just a “downgrade or update to beta”. those are the issues that truly make linux desktop a non starter for most people.
i use it because i know how to fix it, but linux desktop needs a proper recovery system for normal users to handle that kind of problem.
> i use it because i know how to fix it, but linux desktop needs a proper recovery system for normal users to handle that kind of problem.
We kinda already have that for most immutable distros. Fedora silverblue can "downgrade" to an older Fedora version by booting into an older version. This is not foolproof (you can mess up the btrfs volumes) but it will cover most cases of update induced errors and broken versions.
The only other non-immutable distro with a recovery partition is PopOS, though immutable distros seem like the better option here.
Well intel did layoff 45k people or so recently.. surely no coincidence
My gods, out of 1.4 billion Windows users, one out of every 1,800 downloaded this Linux distribution? Yawn.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46026579
But it's an interpretation of what's happening with ZorinOS - isn't that original content?
Same originally submitted title as OP. Same source. Same discussion.
More like [related]
Not really a dupe. That's an article written by Zorin which reads like an ad/press release. This is reporting on that.
Interesting take. To me it seems like a big leap. Take it from a serial Linux dabbler, about once a year I download 10-20 of the top Linux distros and try them all. I download them on my main machine, which is Windows, and copy them all to USB sticks and try them one by one. If someone is only looking at metrics, 20 people just switched to Linux!
If you’re keen on dabbling, focusing on one and making it your own is a great way to go. You might find that the distro was standing in your way when you start from something more bare metal.
The problem is once you go off the distro's beaten path you quickly find yourself forking things like package managers to add features you want. I guess I could pick one and become a contributor... but I really don't have time so... dabbler I remain.
I do everything on bare metal, but if a distro doesn't work very well "live" by booting to its USB stick, I'm not very likely to install it as an actual inhabitant of a particular PC, whether desktop or laptop.