- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
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The regular average joe isn’t going to switch on their own. The average person sees Windows and MacBook as their two options for a laptop.
Also, Linux isn’t a replacement for Windows. It’s its own thing, with its own issues but also advantages.
And most young people don’t have their own computers growing up anymore, it’s all phones and tablets and in the USA apple has won that race.
Pc gaming was a 52 billion dollar industry in 2025.
Each 1% of gamers using Linux is then around 500m… and Linux users trend English speaking, so likely wealthy nations unlike the majority of steam windows users.
Conflating 1% of Linux users also being 1% of revenue is pretty asinine lol
Linux isn’t a replacement for Windows. It’s its own thing, with its own issues but also advantages.
Linux isn’t a replacement because Linux isn’t an operating system. The “battle” isn’t between Linux and Windows, it’s between Windows and specific distros, like Ubuntu or Fedora. Mainstream Linux will require one of those to up their game when it comes to hardware partnerships and customer/end user support. Doing so will require competing against Microsoft along those same business areas, not just from an engineering perspective.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that will be easy. Microsoft is incompetent at a lot of things (incl business most of the time), but they have unlimited money and leverage, and their relationship with the US govt means they’re unlikely to see any antitrust scrutiny when they do illegal shit to suppress competitors.
Edited: sorry wrong comment
And most young people don’t have their own computers growing up anymore, it’s all phones and tablets and in the USA apple has won that race.
I agree full on that. Even if Linux ends up getting more marketshare on PC, PC as a whole seems to be getting less and less popular. There are people I know that dont have a PC at the house because their phones can do everything. And I do mean everything. Its wild to me thats the case, cause I use my laptop/desktop 90% of the time im online…but if an app can do it and you have less income, its a viable alternative.
Worldwide, theres more android devices regularly used than Windows (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/). And in the US, Windows has been going down in the graphs like crazy: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states-of-america/#monthly-200901-202512
Just this year windows has been stable at 30-35% but thats nothing compared to what they were a decade ago. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states-of-america/#monthly-202501-202512
With the RAM/SSD/compute shortage happening, I can see people:
- Using their existing win 10 machines for WAAAY longer than is good. 2 Switching over to iOS/MAC (cause if its expensive, might as well get something good)
- More and more Android/small linux devices gain traction in niche markets (like retro handhelds is almost exclusively linux)
- Us nerds using Linux with our old machines raging against the system slowly gaining market-share.
“Everything” that they do. Only because they don’t know how efficient browsing with 100 tabs can be.
I am not joking. Comparing products online can’t be efficient with only five tabs.
If people can function only with a phone, there’s a LOT they aren’t doing.
I use my phone constantly, but trying to get even a rooted Android phone to replace my PC’s? Yea, no.
I’m not doing spreadsheet stuff only on my phone, or documents, or page layout, etc.
That younger folks are heavily mobile centric is a result of pressure by Google/MS, etc to get them used to it. When they’re used to the limitations of mobile it’ll be easier to limit PCs in the same ways.
And business, yea, no, mobile isn’t replacing computers. They’re great adjuncts, but even my laptop screen is sometimes too small - and I’m not someone that needs a large screen although time.
Yeah as soon as you try to get to the advanced level of any task then mobile sputters out.
I’m making a personal spreadsheet on my phone, and as soon as i want to do anything even slightly advanced it turns out that that feature either doesn’t exist in the app or is extremely undiscoverable.
Similarly for video and audio editing, you can really do a lot of it on mobile, but as soon as you want to do advanced things then the features either don’t exist or are much slower and harder to accomplish on mobile
