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- cross-posted to:
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Certainly the Blacklight test show that Microsoft EU respect way more the privacy (forced by law) than Microsoft US.
Certainly the Blacklight test show that Microsoft EU respect way more the privacy (forced by law) than Microsoft US.
Microsoft should be getting worried about Linux.
Tbh no not really, as long a OEMs either dont ship Linux at all or only niche OEMs do (or major OEMs on a small subset of their products) Linux will be a niche. The European Market still relies on American OEMs which means they have been cornered by Microsoft.
Yes, but currently Linux isn’t a valid option for a lot of users, because a lot of professional and corporation apps, apart of most games are Windows only. To rise Linux is needed to change this first. The only alternative for this issue is maybe using instead eg. WindowsX, something like an “de-microsofted” Windows. Linux is certainly the best alternative, but also has some drawbacks, like too much different distros not always compatible one with another, depending on the distro also often an deficient support and maintance, certain driver problems, among others. Not good if an still minority OS is above to diversified, which cause a lot of problems for the devs of software. To dethrone Windows as leader of the market does it still need a lot of work in many environments.
I, a Linux user, agree that there is work to be done, but I disagree with the “this needs to change first” on proprietary software availability. Specifically the “first” bit.
Let me explain why: The problem of software availability is a chicken and egg problem. No users on an OS = no developers make stuff for it = no users because there is no software.
With Wine/Proton, Valve “fixed” this issue for gamers. This “opened the floodgates”, and at least in one group of computer users, made Linux viable as a daily driver. People who play video games are diverse, and have different needs for software outside gaming, so this change grew the userbase of every category of software in Linux, not just games.
With an actual userbase comes both a community of people, who are all potential contributors for FOSS, whether that’s programming, docs, or reporting issues. And a marketshare for businesses to target (and profit off of).
The ball has clearly started rolling, Linux is gaining marketshare at a pace it hasn’t seen before. The bigger the userbase gets, the more software will work overall. The more software, the more people who can switch.
There isn’t a single definable point where software availability suddenly makes a userbase appear, these two grow together.
So yes, there is work to be done, but no, it doesn’t “need to change first”.
A lot of people find out after using Linux that it’s perfect for their daily tasks. A lot of other people never bother, and thus never find out. With Windows 10 EOL coming up, and MS pushing more and more onto users (like recall and copilot), a portion of people forced to switch will look for alternatives, or will try out Linux because they’ve heard of it as an alternative.
As for your other arguments:
Which used to be true, but is significantly better than even a couple years ago. “Standardized” packaging like Flatpak makes a ton of software available on all distros, ensuring compatibility. Valve took a shot at this too with Steam Linux Runtime, but this hasn’t seen any use outside Steam.
For the vast majority of distros, no. Though I agree that we (the community as a whole) should stop accepting terrible resources for finding Linux distros (like “top 10 distros” lists that make no sense to a new user) and push for better ones.
Which is being solved too. “driver problems” is exclusively Nvidia, but the issues are (very slowly) being fixed (by nvidia), and distros are offering easy options for getting the Nvidia drivers. Nouveau/NVK is also on the slow cooker, but I trust it’ll come out great. “Among others” is not a valid reason.
Which fits into the point of Flatpaks for proprietary software, and highlights where FOSS truly shines. Flatpaks standardize the runtime, proprietary software only needs to support this one standard to support all distros. FOSS devs can target whatever they want for their project. If “works on my machine” is good enough for them, so be it. (People will always complain about stuff like this though). If a distro wants to officially provide some open source software to its users, it has to be packaged. With the packaging process for a distro, modifications might need to be made, which can often be contributed back to upstream.
It’s a lot closer than you think. It’s already a viable daily driver for many. The biggest blocker is the fact that MS is a global megacorp, with advertising, OEM “support”, and a lot of money to “persuade” people and companies to use Windows.
OEM support also ties into the whole “choosing a distro”. I trust that even the worst OEMs choose at least a supported distro, which takes all pressure away from the user. When Linux marketshare grows enough for OEMs to provide the option, the least technical users going to a brick and mortar store will be presented with “100$ cheaper, but looks different than your current computer”. If Windows UI keeps being as inconsistent as it currently is, it would have similar impact for non-technical users going between Windows N and N+1 as it does going to Linux.
Agree, in part, certainly the panorama is changing, but fact is that Linux has still only an 4-5% marketshare reparted in several different distros. Well, the Flatpack is an solution, but the general amount of soft m FOSS and also proprietary is still lightyears away from the software catalogue from Windows, simply because Windows is by far the most used OS (I hope this may change in the future, we’ll see) and in consequence most soft, incluse FOSS, is developed for this OS. law of the market. Yes, for a normal user with his daily tasks, Linux is the best option, but as said, not for everyone. Linux has it’s drawbacks as any other OS. The perfect OS is always the one which best fits the need and tasks of each user, period.
they are literally doing that with wine and proton.
most peoples use cases are covered in the workplace.