Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before: <yyyy> will be the year of the Linux desktop. Even in Linux circles this is greeted with eye-rolling. Here\u2019s the funny thing, though: Linux long ago won the hearts and minds of end users, even while the Linux desktop continues to spin its wheels.<\/p>\n
How can that be?<\/p>\n
The paradox is easily explained. But as for Linux\u2019s failure to capture desktop hearts and minds, that\u2019s a complicated story. I\u2019ll lay it out for you.<\/p>\n
First, the paradox: According to the latest Annenberg Surveying the Digital Future report<\/a>, the average American now spends 24 hours a week online. Meanwhile, Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker\u2019s 2018 Internet Trends Report<\/a> shows the average adult in 2017 spending 5.9 hours a day watching or listening to digital media.<\/p>\n And what do roughly 95.6% of all websites run on<\/a>? With the exception of Microsoft sites, the answer is Linux. Facebook? Linux. Google? Linux. Yahoo? Linux. Netflix? Linux. I can go on and on. You may use Windows on your desktop, but it\u2019s effectively just a front end to Linux-based services and data. You might as well be using a Chromebook (running on Linux-based Chrome OS, by the way).<\/p>\n But as a matter of fact, Windows is no longer the top end-user operating system. Oh yes, it does still dominate the desktop, but the desktop hasn\u2019t been king of the end-user hill for some time. By StatCounter\u2019s reckoning, the most popular end-user operating system<\/a> as of <\/u>September 2018, with 40.85% market share, was \u2014 drum roll, please \u2014 Android. Which \u2014 guess what \u2014 is based on Linux.<\/p>\n So, in several senses, Linux has been the top end-user operating system for some time.<\/p>\n But not on the desktop, where Windows still reigns.<\/p>\n Why? There are many reasons.<\/p>\n Back when desktop Linux got its start, Microsoft kept it a niche operating system by using strong-arm tactics with PC vendors<\/a>. For instance, when Linux-powered netbooks gave Microsoft serious competition on low-end laptops in the late \u201900s, Microsoft dug XP Home up from the graveyard<\/a> to stop it in its tracks.<\/p>\n But Microsoft\u2019s avid competitiveness is only part of the story. In fact, Microsoft has gotten quite chummy with Linux lately. It\u2019s fair to say that it\u2019s no longer trying to stop the Linux desktop from gaining ground.<\/p>\n No, what has done more than Microsoft to keep the Linux desktop down is the Linux community.<\/p>\n First, while the major Linux companies \u2014 Canonical<\/a>, Red Hat<\/a> and SUSE<\/a> \u2014 all support Linux desktops, they all decided early on that the big money was to be made with servers (and nowadays with containers and the cloud). The biggest Linux players determined that the Linux desktop was a small market \u2014 and then they did very little to change that.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s more to it than that. The Linux desktop has also been plagued by fragmentation. There is no one Linux desktop; there are dozens, and they are not at all alike. There\u2019s the Debian Linux<\/a> family, which includes Ubuntu<\/a> and Mint<\/a>; the Red Hat team, with Fedora<\/a> and CentOS<\/a>; Arch Linux<\/a>;<\/u> Manjaro Linux<\/a>; and numerous others.<\/p>\n And then there are the desktop interfaces. Personally, as a dedicated Linux desktop user for decades, I love that I have a choice between GNOME<\/a>, KDE Plasma<\/a>, Cinnamon<\/a>, Xfce<\/a>, MATE<\/a>, etc. for my desktop interface. But most people just find it confusing.<\/p>\n All of that just scratches the surface. There are also numerous incompatible package managers: Debian Package Management System (DPKG)<\/a>, Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)<\/a>, Pacman<\/a>, Zypper<\/a>, and many others.<\/p>\n You\u2019d think everyone would learn to play well with one another. Nope. Not happening. The fragmentation just keeps getting worse, it seems. For example, the next generation of program installers will use a container-based approach. Do we have a single standard for that? Ha! Ubuntu has Snap<\/a>, Red Hat has Flatpak<\/a>,<\/u> and never the twain shall meet.<\/p>\n All this is as confusing as can be to newcomers. Heck, it\u2019s confusing even to Linus Torvalds\u2019 diving buddy, VMware<\/a> Chief Open Source Officer Dirk Hohndel, who wrote<\/a>, \u201cThe current situation with dozens of distributions, each with different rules, each with different versions of different libraries, some with certain libraries missing, each with different packaging tools and packaging formats … that basically tells app developers \u2018go away, focus on platforms that care about applications.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n So, yes, 2019 will be the year of Linux end users who don\u2019t know they\u2019re Linux end users. But, \u201cthe\u201d Linux desktop as a mass-market alternative to Windows? No, that\u2019s not ever going to happen, not as long as Linux developers can\u2019t play on the same page.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll continue being a Linux desktop user. For me, as a power user\u2019s power user, it\u2019s the best of all operating systems. But for most people, Linux will never be a drop-in replacement for macOS or Windows.<\/p>\n