this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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The future of Linux (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago by pmk@lemmy.sdf.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm not proposing anything here, I'm curious what you all think of the future.

What is your vision for what you want Linux to be?

I often read about wanting a smooth desktop experience like on MacOS, or having all the hardware and applications supported like Windows, or the convenience of Google products (mail, cloud storage, docs), etc.

A few years ago people were talking about convergence of phone/desktop, i.e. you plug your phone into a big screen and keyboard and it's now your desktop computer. That's one vision. ChromeOS has its "everything is in the cloud" vision. Stallman has his vision where no matter what it is, the most important part is that it's free software.

If you could decide the future of personal computing, what would it be?

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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

TLDR: The future are linux hardware vendors, governments deciding to use linux, and RISC-V+ARM.

There are already a few linux hardware vendors out there and my favorites are Tuxedo Computers as well as Starlabs and Slimbook (the guys who make the KDE laptop. Not to be outdone by linux phone vendors like Pine64, Purism, and Volla. We need more of them.
Hopefully they will have the funds to start marketing and ad campaigns to change the image of linux from "just for geeks" or "only if you have spare time" to something like "better for privacy", "the only option for true freedom", "cheap but classy", "subscribe to nothing", etc.

Linux has no problem providing a fluid experience with RISC-V and ARM, while windows struggles - especially due to the amount of proprietary and legacy software that exists on it. Windows might be able to prepare for it and provide a translation layer or VM for those things, but probably not with a good experience.

Finally, governments. I thank Trump a lot for this: getting China to start accelerate ditching Microsoft. The EU is also wary of Trump winning again to start a tradewar + there is an EU level decision to use opensource. Countries are slow to implement this decree, but I only see it accelerating and countries wising up to international collaboration to create either their own distro (e.g EULinux or something), or paying emergent opensource vendors to write solutions for them.

I don't believe this will be done before 2030, probably 2035 we might see ~50% of government desktops and laptops on linux, but the future is very difficult to predict.