Question about Linux app

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Absolutely BetterRed. For such people, Windows is a better bet

Linux is not for everyone. Indeed, I also want a windows machine in my house as my main pc

But for those who simply surf and do basic office stuff, it's a viable alternative

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

Yes. I was talking about pcs for personal use. Someone who supplies their own pc for work (self employed or because of a BYOD policy) may well choose Windows etc

But the point being made more generally is that Linux is increasingly a viable alternative; certainly to repurpose a 2nd laptop that can no longer run windows 11

There is no laptop that used to be able to run Windows 11. If it can run Windows 11, it can still run Windows 11.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

It was on Windows 8, or possibly 10 (I forget), but couldn't upgrade to 11. My language was incorrect

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is no laptop that used to be able to run Windows 11. If it can run Windows 11, it can still run Windows 11.

Quite a few older laptops that were updated from Windows 10 to Windows 11 are stuck at 23H2 or other version due to updated requirements. One corporation one acquaintance of mine works for had to replace ~60 Lenovo laptops when their main custom corporate software was updated and now requires Windows 11 24H2. Could the update not have required 24H2? Very likely but I'm not the dev and there may have been other reasons for requiring the update.

[alaskazimm]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

Gaming is windows based for sure.

Gaming on Linux has come a long way. In the last few years Steam has a built in compatibility mode that will run many Windows games on a Linux install. I moved to Linux on all my computers many years ago and had to give up playing Skyrim. It was only a month or so ago that I found out about Steam's compatibility and was able to download and play Skyrim again - and it runs great with no lagging or display issues. I was even able to mod it!
Ah, good times again . . .

[Mr_H_Poirot]

That's interesting. The only 'gaming' I do is play 'football manager 23' and 'Civilization' on Steam. But I thought I could only use it on Windows as I didn't think it worked on the Linux version.

In fairness, the PC I have with the best specs is Windows so I wouldn't really use the Linux ones anyway. but I didn't realise that some of those games would now work on the linux version of steam

[Rbneader]

The days of not being able to game on Linux are basically over. The Steam Deck is a Linux machine, and the Proton compatibility layer in Steam means everything I've tried runs in Linux. Valve has done a ton of work to be able to be able to sell games regardless of which OS their customers are using.

There's always a few edge cases, but Windows 11 has gotten a lot of gamers to switch to Linux and I haven't heard of people having major issues. It really is a different landscape than it was even a few years ago.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

there are some things that aren't on steam though. Fortnite etc

[JSWolf]

There are a lot of people switching to Linux who have switched back to Windows.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Not sure of your source but, from clearly a low base in percentage terms, Linux usage has increased over last couple of decades. It would of course be quite usual for some people to experiment and then find they don't like it. That's what experimenting involves.

60mn desktop users is very small in percentage terms. But it's a pretty sizeable customer base in absolute terms

I suspect I'm not alone in having a main machine on windows and a second (older) Linux machine

[DNSB]

For what it may be worth, I have my desktop on Windows 11, a laptop on SUSE Tumbleweed and multiple virtual Linux and Windows machines on my desktop. My laptop has a single VM running MacOS.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

Not sure of your source but, from clearly a low base in percentage terms, Linux usage has increased over last couple of decades. It would of course be quite usual for some people to experiment and then find they don't like it. That's what experimenting involves.

60mn desktop users is very small in percentage terms. But it's a pretty sizeable customer base in absolute terms

I suspect I'm not alone in having a main machine on windows and a second (older) Linux machine

Windows 11 usage has increased.



Also, as you can see here, Linux is on the decline.

[Mr_H_Poirot]

Putting aside my point was about decades, you are ignoring the increase in unknown

If you research that you find

In Statcounter’s data for 2026, the "Unknown" category has become a significant and controversial slice of the market share, sometimes reaching as high as 8% globally and over 16% on desktops.

Because Statcounter relies on User Agent (UA) sniffing (reading the ID string your browser sends to a website), "Unknown" is essentially a bucket for any traffic that fails this ID check. Here is the likely makeup of that category:


Privacy conscious Linux users are widely considered the largest "hidden" group. Many Linux distributions and privacy-focused browsers (like LibreWolf or hardened Firefox) deliberately "spoof" or strip their User Agent strings to prevent fingerprinting.

Why it's "Unknown": If a browser sends a generic or blank string to avoid being tracked, Statcounter cannot verify if it's Ubuntu, Fedora, or Arch, so it defaults to Unknown.

The "India Anomaly": In 2026, "Unknown" desktop share in India spiked to over 50%. Analysts believe this is a mix of localized Linux variants and massive use of privacy extensions that break standard analytics.

[rjwse@aol.com]

Linux is not for everyone. Indeed, I also want a windows machine in my house as my main pc

But for those who simply surf and do basic office stuff, it's a viable alternative

I*have not used Windows for anything whatsoever at all since about 1998. I ran 5 interconnected car repair shops with sneaker-net Ubuntu and home-made Point of Sale. I hate Windows. There is something basically wrong with it that makes my skin crawl. Windows is loathsome kludge, an outgrowth of DOS (not even developed in house). The better competitors like Borland were trounced by Microsoft. Now Windows is a conglomeration of patches on top of patches. Virtually all of Europe is migrating away from Windows, especially the governments. When you go online I suspect maybe 90% of everything runs on linux, not windows. Cheapest thing (what I do, at any rate) is buy a laptop with Windows on it and wipe it to install Ubuntu. Never looked back.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Mr_H_Poirot

Putting aside my point was about decades, you are ignoring the increase in unknown

If you research that you find

In Statcounter’s data for 2026, the "Unknown" category has become a significant and controversial slice of the market share, sometimes reaching as high as 8% globally and over 16% on desktops.

Because Statcounter relies on User Agent (UA) sniffing (reading the ID string your browser sends to a website), "Unknown" is essentially a bucket for any traffic that fails this ID check. Here is the likely makeup of that category:


Privacy conscious Linux users are widely considered the largest "hidden" group. Many Linux distributions and privacy-focused browsers (like LibreWolf or hardened Firefox) deliberately "spoof" or strip their User Agent strings to prevent fingerprinting.

Why it's "Unknown": If a browser sends a generic or blank string to avoid being tracked, Statcounter cannot verify if it's Ubuntu, Fedora, or Arch, so it defaults to Unknown.

The "India Anomaly": In 2026, "Unknown" desktop share in India spiked to over 50%. Analysts believe this is a mix of localized Linux variants and massive use of privacy extensions that break standard analytics.

Thing is, we don't know how many unknown are Windows, MacOS, or Linux. So while it's increasing, it's an issue because we don't know how it effect the other stats.