> Throughout most of the 2010s, EUV lithography was like the "year of the Linux desktop" - i.e., this year will be the year where EUV was suitable for high volume manufacturing.
We need to learn to recognize the difference between something that's never going to happen for either physical or economic/social/structural reasons, and something that is just really difficult and takes a long time.
I always think of this when I think about fusion and the irritating "fusion is 20 years away and always will be" meme. In reality fusion has been edging closer, and closer, and closer for decades. Like EUV lithography it's just incredibly hard and requires a ton of capital and time and some of the smartest people on Earth to make it a reality. The same logic applies to things like a working HIV vaccine, life extension, or human space flight and space settlement.
The reason there's never been a year of the Linux desktop on the other hand has to do with the full picture of what's required to mass market a desktop OS and support that, not just the technical problems, as well as business reasons around what Microsoft does to incentivize vendors to stay in their ecosystem. Linux desktops are just about ready today but no mainstream laptop/desktop PC vendor is going to sell them for a long laundry-list of non-technical or para-technical (legacy software base) reasons.
I'd say Linux desktops have been good enough for a long time, but never broke into the mainstream for the reasons you cite. ChromeOS is the closest thing I guess, but outside of schools and a few other institutional uses, Chromebooks are not very popular.
Linux is not preinstalled. There are some ThinkPads* and Dells with Ubuntu or Fedora but you need to know that.
And people how know will and must reinstall anyway Arch, Gentoo, Suse, Debian, Fedora or Ubuntu.
The Steamdeck is an excellent proof how a full featured Linux (SteamOS is based upon Arch) is shipped well. Not a unmaintained or googlyified closed-source derivate of Linux (Android and ChromeOS).
* I ordered an X13 Gen1 AMD with Linux for fun. Worked well, installation was clean. No 120$ for Microsoft and its stock owners. You shall not feed the bad guys. Especially when you will never use Windows.
Steamdeck is a gaming console not a general purpose device from the perspective of most people (yes I know it's a standard PC and completely open but that's not something most people care about). Linux is more or less just an implementation detail. Obviously not as extreme but a bit like PS4 being BSD but I don't think it's that different from Android/ChromeOS. Arch is there just to run a completely proprietary layer which is the only thing most people who use it interact with >90% of the time.
Additionally, to note that while PlayStation, Switch, Android/NDK, have some form of POSIX support, in some cases with overlapping 3D APIs with GNU/Linux, most of the studios don't bother with GNU/Linux, and rather let Valve do the work with Proton on supporting the execution of their Windows versions.
SteamDeck is only a successful by making Linux irrelevant, after all its key feature is doing Windows API translation.
SteamOS only purpose is for Valve not to pay Windows licenses.
I will consider SteamDeck a success, in games not sales, the day all top level games played on it, were actually developed for SteamOS in first place, and not Windows games running under Proton.
> I will consider SteamDeck a success, in games not sales, the day all top level games played on it, were actually developed for SteamOS in first place, and not Windows games running under Proton.
Yep. Removing unnecessary API-Layers, a lot issues and lifting the maintenance burden from Valve. I play only games with native ports e.g. Counter-Strike 2, Unrailed[1], OpenRA. I still wonder why Valve doesn't feature Steam Awards for the best native Linux ports, separated for indie games and triple A games. Combined with reduced fees for successful participants. Would allow Valve to focus solely on Linux. Stop harming Linux by directing money to games which don't support Linux.
[1] Kids? Guests? A party? Play it. It is Mario-Kart ported to the 21 Century. Best with gamepads.
They're pretty incredible machines for the price. I bought one a year and a half ago in an emergency, as the networking on my laptop died over the course of a few days and I needed something for browsing and email. I got the Linux dev environment set up on the Chromebook and I actually kept it instead of getting a new expensive laptop.
They are. The problem is that they are for the educational market. Especially with Google's exit from hardware, they're basically mostly cheap devices for kids. And, if you do build a nice one, you could probably get a lower-end MacBook Air for about the same price which would be almost as low-maintenance to use if you wanted it to be.
The cheapest Air is $999 for a fast but pretty limited 8G device. That budget gets you a 16G Meteor Lake Chromebook which runs Debian cleanly in a VM. It's true that Apple is doing a better job than it used to in serving the budget market, but Macs remain pretty exclusive. Similarly a low end Windows laptop with WSL is a better budget choice, though IMHO very inferior to the Chromebook in Linux integration.
The thing is that I don't really want a budget Chromebook (which certainly exist).
I want something for travel mostly. Ended up getting a new iPad Air recently which isn't all that light but probably fits my needs best as it now has a pretty functional keyboard and can easily be used without the keyboard as an entertainment/consumption device.
I'm not sure. IMHO it's good enough for power users and people who don't really need much besides a browser and maybe do light office work etc. or completely fixed/define workflows. In between there is a huge gap that's quite hard to cross due too generally poor and inconsistent UX, various package installation, configuration issues and various UX patterns that are hard for many non technical people to grasp.
OTH Windows and macOS "just work". Well maybe not so much for Windows but at least it's a lot easier to find someone who can help you.
Also Linux hardly offer anything at all for this segment. If you use only your PC for gaming, office work, media creation and similar stuff what value does Linux offer you that would make it worth switching (even if Linux UX was much better than it is switching still requires significant effort and still a lot of hops to jump just to do what you already know how on Windows)? I think approximately none at all.
Chromebooks on schools is basically a US thing, in Europe most parents buy regular computers to their kids, and only top tier schools do anything beyond having a computer room class for "lets do something on the computer today".
After the Windows XP price reductions gave the first blow to the Linux netbooks market, the tablet market finished it off, for regular consumers.
Linux VMs on macOS and Windows are "The Year of Linux Desktop".
Valve sells the SteamDeck and is preparing SteamOS for use on similar handhelds available now from most major vendors.
They may not be traditional laptops or desktops, but they're PCs, and they're being sold with compatibility with a large installed base of Windows games in mind. Moreover, handheld gaming PC users seem to perceive SteamOS as being superior to Windows in this device category.
SteamDeack is a much more open equivalent of Android/ChomeOS. Yes you can use it as a Linux "Desktop" but form the perspective of most people it's just there to run a single proprietary app while Linux is just an implementation detail.
Of course some people will use it for other things than Steam but I doubt it's a very significant proportion.
> SteamDeack is a much more open equivalent of Android/ChomeOS
SteamDeck runs a minimally modified Arch Linux, with a full KDE desktop installed from the factory and prominent switch in the main UI to close Steam and reboot into a full desktop.
> it's just there to run a single proprietary app
Tens of thousands of Windows games, more like. The Steam app is just a launcher and store. Even Windows doesn't successfully run all legacy windows applications, so I think it's incredible that a successful mainstream product focused on gamers not only provides simpler user interaction than Windows gaming portables, but does so while running unmodified Windows games on Linux.
I cannot overstate the importance of Valve creating a funding stream for Wine / Proton development by doing this, hiring a boatload of Wine devs, and fostering a massive user base for testing and validation. Wine was already impressive, but it has improved leaps and bounds with Valve's efforts. This opens up the door for future cannibalization of Microsoft's share of other market segments.
There was a time when hardware support under Linux was holding it back, that time is long gone. Linux desktops and applications have developed to the point that anyone familiar with a Mac or Windows will feel reasonably at home under Gnome or KDE. Which left games and specialty Windows / Mac applications, and Valve seems to have found a way to fund knocking down that barrier.
It's a much bigger deal than another Android or ChomeOS device.
> SteamDeck runs a minimally modified Arch Linux, with a full KDE desktop
> Tens of thousands of Windows games, more like
I'm certainly aware of that and not arguing about it, just saying that it's not really relevant for most people that the device is targeted at.
> will feel reasonably at home under Gnome or KDE.
I don't agree with that at all, maybe on a very superficial level. But even if that were the case what value would Linux be offering to most of these people? Whether we like it or not Windows and macOS still have plenty of other benefits/advantages for most non-technical people besides letting them run specialty software.
> Valve seems to have found a way to fund knocking down that barrier.
What they are aiming to achieve is still no different from what Google did with Android and ChromeOS. They just want a platform they can fully control and make money from while minimizing their costs. Sure, they are doing it in a way that's much more "open" and benefits Linux much more than Android but they still have no other incentives besides maximizing the number of people who are using Steam and reducing competition from other storefronts like Xbox store on Windows etc.
Cool. Similarly, I can install MacOS on Windows in a VM or the other way around. Until an OEM ships it pre-installed, most people won't know that's possible or how to do it. Microsoft's stranglehold starts at the OEM.
Desktops are irrelevant? Other than a few things does any actual work happen on mobile devices?
I think it would be correct to say that present-day desktops are mature and stable and aren't rapidly changing because they fill a mature niche. Mobile does seem to have decimated the casual computing and much of the non-work-related computing niche, at least for non-technical people.
I wonder if there's an argument to be made that desktops should become more technical and power user oriented since that is now their niche.
I think “year of Linux in the desktop” has always been understood to be in the context of consumer devices. Otherwise, I mean, it’s always been year of Unix on the workstation/server, right? With room to quibble in the prosumer space.
I think it's because Windows as a line of business is still expected to turn some kind of a profit, even though operating systems are not profit centers anymore and haven't been for some time. Whereas, Apple and Google view their operating systems as just necessary infrastructure to support profitable ventures.
We need to learn to recognize the difference between something that's never going to happen for either physical or economic/social/structural reasons, and something that is just really difficult and takes a long time.
…
I always think of this when I think about fusion and the irritating "fusion is 20 years away and always will be" meme. In reality fusion has been edging closer, and closer, and closer for decades. Like EUV lithography it's just incredibly hard and requires a ton of capital and time and some of the smartest people on Earth to make it a reality.
Never is a very long time, so I’m not going to say never. But it’s not at all certain that when all those smartest people declare victory we’ll have something that doesn’t make economic sense because the upfront capital costs are too high even if the theoretical (at that point) full lifecycle kWh cost is low.
It’s a good point, but one thing to consider is that ultra long hard tech might be structurally challenging as well. If fusion requires 100 years of capital and R&D it won’t be viable ever due to economic/societal/structural reasons.
We need to learn to recognize the difference between something that's never going to happen for either physical or economic/social/structural reasons, and something that is just really difficult and takes a long time.
I always think of this when I think about fusion and the irritating "fusion is 20 years away and always will be" meme. In reality fusion has been edging closer, and closer, and closer for decades. Like EUV lithography it's just incredibly hard and requires a ton of capital and time and some of the smartest people on Earth to make it a reality. The same logic applies to things like a working HIV vaccine, life extension, or human space flight and space settlement.
The reason there's never been a year of the Linux desktop on the other hand has to do with the full picture of what's required to mass market a desktop OS and support that, not just the technical problems, as well as business reasons around what Microsoft does to incentivize vendors to stay in their ecosystem. Linux desktops are just about ready today but no mainstream laptop/desktop PC vendor is going to sell them for a long laundry-list of non-technical or para-technical (legacy software base) reasons.