There already are Linux standards, its just that there are lots of people developing their own distros. Asking people who are developing in their free time to contribute to a collective solution if they don’t want to is forcing them to do something they don’t want to do in their free time.
Linux will become big in countries that encourage their governments and companies not to use Windows, and eventually there will be a few major players for desktop beyond the big 3 for enterprise (Suse, Ubuntu, Redhat)
Astra Linux in Russia is becoming the mass adopted Linux, the longer the war goes, the more companies that won’t be able to renew Microsoft licenses, the more adoption of Linux will increase.
Deepin Linux (China UOS) gets about 500 posts on it’s forums in Chinese per day. That version of Linux will likely become the dominant desktop OS in China by ~2030 if the USA continues sanctions.
Linux Mint has incrementally been growing a user base and donations every month. 5 years ago they were getting 7,000 euros on average per month, today they get 12,000 euros on average per month.
I’m not worried about Linux Desktop anymore, it’s a permanently established common good even if the majors like Red Hat and Ubuntu fold. And just like Lemmy and Mastodon popped up, at some point in the future Microsoft will do something greedy with Windows and people will flock to a few distros and it’ll all be over then.
It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. The problem with replacing things that work with something “better” is that “better” is subjective, so you end up with a new “better” way every few years, and maintaining existing systems becomes a god awful slog. See the JavaScript ecosystem.
The bash I wrote 10 years ago still works today, and it will still work in 10 more years. The same bash will very likely work on your computer, on a remote server, etc. This is the power of not chasing “better” all the time.
Try running a Ruby or Node program from 10 years ago today on your computer. Now, try running it on a random Linux server.
Please do not take this as a slight against Ruby or Node, or any other high level programming language. Bash compared to those is simply apples and oranges, they are not the same thing.
By all means, if you have a project that requires a Ruby runtime anyway, write operational scripts with Ruby, run them with Rake, etc.
Want a portable script that doesn’t depend on a complex runtime? Use bash.
If bash is too limiting, use Perl. No, seriously. Perl is fine. It is about as ubiquitously available as bash, and the standard library likely has what you need to get the job done. People blindly dismiss Perl because some blog post told them to, usually in the context of writing application code. You’re not writing application code, you’re writing scripts. Would you write an application with bash? No.
The reddit API debacle sent me down a Lemmy, FOSS, Linux, privacy, hacker rabbit hole that I will hopefully and happily never have to leave. My eyes are opened to a better future. I’ll probably be duel booting windows for awhile still to keep up for my job, but I have been able to start transitioning away pretty easily thanks to the hard work of linux desktop devs. I am so grateful for the FOSS community and hope to contribute myself someday.
The true year of linux is not any specific year or a userbase percentage but when linux is widely preinstalled on consumer hardware without nerds needing to recommend to people to install it themselves
In my region (India), for a while, there seemed to be plenty of laptops available with Linux installed as an option. Then again in the last few years that seems to have withered down to almost none, sometimes even if the same model is available with Linux in some other regions. I am not sure what changed. Perhaps some deal with Microsoft. The good part is that the fact that they do support Linux elsewhere on the same laptop configuration generally means its easy to get it up and running yourself even if it does not come pre-installed.
In any case, as an old-timer, it’s very impressive to me how much hardware Linux supports nowadays without any drama at all. Not to mention all the progress made in software especially in supporting Windows-only games, which is truly magical work by the Wine / Proton teams. As far as I am concerned the “Year of Linux Desktop” is here already since I can use it daily without missing absolutely anything at all from Windows.
They’re designed to be upgraded and repaired over time so they’re super modular. You can also save some money if you’re not afraid to put it together yourself.
Canonical is just weird like that, it seems. They tend to pick something and fixate on it really hard (Eg. Unity desktop, Mir, that convergent phone thing, now Snaps) and work on it until it’s almost really good, then they get fixated on the next shiny thing and dump whatever they were doing to go chase that instead.
There’s a benefit to Canonical, the corp that maintains Ubuntu, which is that while snaps are open source tech, the server for the snap store is closed source and snap can’t be configured to point at another store.
In other words, it’s about centralized control.
There are some advantages to the tech itself, like live auto-updating, which is good for security-critical server apps, but over all I’m not a fan.
It could be like the old RPM vs DEB arguments. Technically, one could have argued at the time that RPM was explicitly singled out in the Linux Standard base.
However, these days, DEB certainly feels more common (although, from my understanding, Redhat/Slack is big in enterprise, so i’m not actually sure which is more common).
The terms of use appear that they handle your data. If you wamt to avoid a thirdparty. i would suggest KDE connect, can combine with tailscale for cross network sends. Syncthing is also good. or Croc for single transfers either local or across networks.
If you really want a true dumb TV, you should look into the commercial TVs
Personally I just get any TV and don’t connect it to the internet. I disable any popup interfaces/home menus as much as I can on the TV so I just turn it on and it goes to HDMI1 and that is all the TV’s interface needs to do.
I also disable alot of the picture altering features as well. My LG TV has some true motion crap that just made everything a little bit off.
For the most part the handful of TVs I have tried just work.
Do not turn to the Lovecraftian package manager unless you dare. It consumes all, it is all. Your flesh and mind will be ripped in twine across dimensions… if you are a package.
If you’re binary your head will be ripped open and it’s contents modified to fit a new reality.
There is no package, nor source, nor binary that shall be exempt.
All shall be consumed, digested and brought to a new reality.
It will kill the old gods, as there will be only one package manager.
You know why reinstalling Linux is annoying? Because you have to remember (or write down) every piece of config you ever changed. Dark mode in KDE? Change it in settings. Some systemd unit tweak? Change it in /etc/systemd. Want to run some commands at boot? Use systemd (see above), or write an initrd hook (distro-specific). Need a specific version of an app? Need some files in /opt? Need certain packages installed? You better remember to do that!
In NixOS, you “reinstall” your OS every time you change a single setting, because reinstalling NixOS isn’t scary at all - everything that needs to be changed is configured in your configuration - just make sure /home and /var/lib are saved (and perhaps some other dirs, I have root on tmpfsand bind mount all persistent files I need to ensure I know what needs to be preserved on clean reinstall and what doesn’t).
Want to move it to a different PC? No problem, copy the files in /home and /var/lib and simply install NixOS using the configuration you already have on the new PC. Want to create a boot option with slightly different kernel or kernel options, or maybe even another DE? No problem, specializations got you covered. Something broke and you want to try an older version of your system? Just select it in your bootloader, it will “install” the old version of your system on boot!
And of course, this also means it’s easy to share configurations for specific use cases. Want to run on some specific hardware that doesn’t work out of the box? Perhaps nixos-hardware got you covered. Want a certain program set up? Maybe there’s already a NixOS option for system-level config or a home-manager option for user-level config, worst case you can write it yourself and share for everyone else in the community using flakes, and maybe open a PR to nixpkgs/home-manager. Want to share configuration between systems? That’s easy, put them in the same flake and write a common module shared between all of your systems.
Basically, if you’re fine with whatever comes out of the box in any Linux distro, you don’t need NixOS, but if you need configuration, if you run servers, it is a lifesaver. I switched from Arch, no regrets. I run my personal laptop, my server, which I effortlessly migrated from Oracle Cloud when they quit Russia, and my router on it, here’s my NixOS/home-manager config.
The only downsides are the learning curve and the fact that you can’t “just” run programs that expect a FHS layout. You can do it with workarounds like steam-run or appimage-run anyway, but overall be prepared to learn to package stuff for NixOS. Also if you have no experience with functional programming, the Nix language may be hard to understand at first.
Edit: home-manager is also available on all Linux distros and iirc even MacOS. Nix-the-package-manager is also available on all Linux distros and MacOS, and it’s useful for creating consistent developer environments, but it’s NixOS that really makes Nix shine.
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