LeFantome

I am not saying “This is the Year of the Linux Desktop”. That said, things languished below 2% for decades and now it has doubled in just over a year. With the state of Linux Gaming, I could see that happening again.

Also, if ChromeOS continues to converge, you could consider it a Linux distro at some point and it also has about 4% share.

Linux could exceed 10% share this year and be a clear second after Windows.

That leaves me wondering, what percentage do we have to hit before it really is “The Year of the Linux Desktop”. I have never had to wonder that before ( I mean, it obviously was not 3% ). Having to ask is a milestone in itself.

I have seen stats that both Linux and ChromeOS have around 3.5% market share.

If ChromeOS continues to converge with proper desktop Linux, I consider it a distro which makes 10%+ possible this year.

The wild card for me is Linux gaming. It may not grow fast but it totally could.

Which had me wondering for the first time I hearing about “The Year of the Linux Desktop”, what percentage do we have to hit for this to be the year?

I don’t really expect us to hit it but, for the first time, I feel like it is possible.

Source?

We have been hearing about “The Year of the Linux Desktop” for 20 years I think and Linux has less than 5% share.

In contrast, I do not remember hearing “The Year of the Wayland Desktop” until recently. I have been hearing “Wayland is the future” forever but it has been correct the whole time.

By the time we enter 2025, I am not sure there will be a major desktop environment that does not support Wayland and many distros and DEs will be Wayland by default or even Wayland only. That is already happening. Valve may have ditched X by then and it feels like that is where most new Linux users are going to come from. It seems quite unlikely that Wayland market share on the Linux Desktop will be less than 75%.

I am not saying this is “The Year of the Wayland Desktop” but I would feel foolish publicly betting against it.

I have been using X since 1992 with lots of issues. I do not understand the fetish with X11 and why people cling to it so tightly.

Not sure this is the year but my “highly technical reason” is that enough gamers switch.

I imagine Valve wants to get all their gaming up on Wayland.

Hopefully your card is new enough that NVK will work with it.

3 monitors is probably a lot more common than you think.

Yes*. Unless of course the Manjaro makes some dumb mistake as they have regularly historically. There is nothing wrong with it by design though if you avoid the AUR.

A lot of the “working for years” comments here look like folks who only use the Manjaro repos.

Except of course that more ex-Manjaro people move to EOS than vanilla Arch. I have no data on this but there are certainlymore EOS commenters on Manjaro threads than pure Arch ( though often those groups overlap a lot as many people use both ).

I do not know anybody that uses both Manjaro along with any other Arch distro. You are either in or out on Manjaro.

It breaks. It may never break on you but it breaks on A LOT of people and, as a result, there are lots of “don’t use Manjaro people out ther”..

I am not going into detail as I am exhausted from arguing with Manjaro fans that want to pretend all is ex-Manjaro users are wrong about our own experience. The above answers your question. Believe it or not.

I am responding too much but this question seems genuine so I hope this answer helps.

1 - I, at least, do not “dislike” Manjaro. I think it is very good looking. I loved the out of the box experience. I liked it a lot.

2 - Manjaro broke on me multiple times. I now consider it “unsafe”. That is not really “dislike”.

Why unsafe?

1 - the project has governance issues. You can say we should get over them but they have been repetitive. Once bitten, twice shy as they say.

2 - more systemically, using the AUR is less safe than on other Arch distros

Why? Well, primarily because the Manjaro repos “hold back” packages for something like 2 - 4 weeks ( I honestly cannot remember but the number is not the issue ). Manjaro does not curate the AUR itself though so the AUR is “current” compared to other Arch distros.

I will not run through all the ways this can break things. I will point out though that when Manjaro defenders say that “it all syncs up again in a couple of weeks”, they are wrong.

It is not about delaying updates ( sorry if I am insulting your intelligence to say this but Manjaro defenders often insist on thinking this is “the problem” that people have with Manjaro ). This cannot be the problem. Different users update at different times. I do it frequently. Some people wait months.

You can manually delay updates on any Arch distro. EndeavourOS even includes a utility ( eos-update ) to specify a specific delay on package updates.

In short, the problems stem from the lack of repo sync at INSTALL time. Manjaro differs from every other Arch distro in terms of what packages are available when you install software from the AUR.

You can believe that this matters, as I have learned, or you can believe that it does not. I hope it works out for you. I really do.