I think 2022 has the potential to be the Year of the Linux Desktop due to the Steam Deck. Valve has promised that Proton will allow almost all Windows games to run on it. Guaranteed they'll also be working hard on SteamOS polish. If Windows 11 turns out to be messy, then gamers could consider Linux more attractive now.
The original article is:<p><a href="https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/2021-is-the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop" rel="nofollow">https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/2021-is-the-year-of-linux-on-...</a><p>The basic thesis of the author was:<p>1. In 2021, Chromebooks are everywhere.<p>2. Chrome OS is Linux.<p>3. Therefore, 2021 is the year of Linux Desktop.<p>Honestly, I'm not sure this is such a great argument. Isn't it rather like "2021 is the year of Chrome dominance"?
If ChromeOS is the Linux Desktop of 2021, it surely represents the antithesis of open source ideals?<p>ChromeOS is a cloud operating system (OS) that tracks and records all your activity the moment you sign in. Naturally, a Google account is required to use the full functionality of the OS. It is used by millions of schoolkids with all the privacy implications that entails. Somehow, Google's promise to never build profiles of their school users is enough to placate developers. In fact, developers are more likely to <i>defend</i> Google rather than question or scrutinise the privacy implications of using a cloud OS.<p>I presume most developers are happy to sign-in in an OS to unlock OS functionality and have their activity tracked? After all, we've happy to push this model on kids.<p>It's ironic that so much cloud software, whether an OS or a SaaS product, is built on open source software. And yet cloud software gives users less control and more tracking than the desktop model. Cloud software has been open source's greatest success - just not in the way open source advocates expected it to be.
I tried to install Ubuntu 20.04 on my Thinkpad P51 with two monitors. Fonts were funny and the mouse never got the monitors right. Horrible things were happening when I was recovering from sleep mode.<p>I installed Windows 10 on my Thinkpad P51 with two monitors. Everything worked out of the box.<p>So at least for me 2021 is the year of Windows Desktop and certainly not Linux Desktop.<p>Disclaimer: I try 1-2 times a year to install a working Linux on desktop since 1994, and have my family use it. It never, ever fucking worked. I am so pissed of because of that because I have Linux on every backend server and I lost hope that one day I will have a Linux desktop.<p>Comment: I may have been able to make Linux work on my computer after digging some obscure settings in x.org and whatnot. I just want my front end device to just work - so Windows it is.
A thing that still does not work well is fluid, resizable remote desktop in combination with fractional DPI scaling.
X2GO enables the remoting part but does not work modern DEs[0]. Even then, there are bugs when remoting[1].<p>Also, MS Teams installed from the Ubuntu software store on Ubuntu 21.04 does not support screen sharing. You have to switch from Wayland to X11 to enable it. Even then it is missing features like selecting a single window to share, allowing others to highlight on your screen. It does not matter whether this is Microsoft's fault - Teams is a must have in many organizations and Canonical promotes the app in their store.<p>[0] <a href="https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:de-compat" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:de-compat</a><p>[1] What I have personally encountered: on KDE drkonqi crashes all the time when remote, on GTK-based DEs I get color management prompts and gnome-keyring breaks on local sessions - even worse, it seems to block for minutes then tell the caller that you don't have credentials instead of exiting with an error.
I think "Linux Desktop" means something other than "a computer running the Linux kernel that runs desktop applications".<p>ChromeOS is as much a Linux computer as is a Tesla automobile. Sure, there's a linux kernel down in there somewhere, but it's not the thing we mean when we say "Linux Desktop".
If you accept Android and ChromeOS count toward the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" then the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" isn't very meaningful or interesting. Wake me up when Adobe starts shipping Photoshop in a .deb or .rpm.
2004 was the year of the Linux Desktop.<p>Fedora Core gave you everything you needed for the typical desktop use case: a browser, an office suite, and an email client, with a modern, sensible GUI.<p>Anybody still denying the usability of desktop Linux since then either plays vidya (which, granted, has been a perennial problem on Linux), or is simply wrong.
Been using Mint w/ Cinnamon for a while, tried Kubuntu as well and will probably switch back to a KDE-based distro at some point when I have time. Both are fine but I don't find either as functional for me as macOS (which has lost a lot of usability over time as well)<p>More and more I find myself using the CLI...
What about the Year of the Linux VR Desktop (<a href="http://www.simulavr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.simulavr.com/</a>)?<p>A new platform could give people new reasons to consider alternatives?
If Linux ever really gained mainstream appeal (say 40-60% adoption) it would be ruined by many of the pressures which ruined most mainstream operating systems. I think we’re far better off with Linux at 1% or so.
I've heard this question every year since 1999, and I somehow feel like we're stuck in a bash loop with no break:<p>YEAROFLINUX=1999<p>while :<p>do<p>echo "Is $YEAROFLINUX the year of the Linux Desktop?"<p>YEAROFLINUX=`expr $YEAROFLINUX + 1`<p>done
This "year of the Linux Desktop" joke is getting a bit tiresome. What is missing exactly?<p>Sure the desktop is a bit ugly. But pretty much everything works out of the box. If MS released a native Office for Linux I could get rid of my Mac.