FRESH

Hacker News

2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

830 points by todsacerdoti

by roxolotl

25 subcomments

“start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews”
Haven’t used windows in five years or so but I’ve kept hearing bad things. This really is the icing on the cake though. Yea the AI stuff is dumb but if a OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong.

by sylens

16 subcomments

If this wasn’t HN, I would swear that my personal recommendation algorithm has gotten Linux desktop-pilled and that’s why I’m seeing so many posts like these every day. But in reality I think there is a groundswell of momentum happening here, and with component prices rising, I only see this continuing as more people look to breathe new life into older hardware.

by the_hoser

12 subcomments

For those of us that have been using Linux for a long time (since 1999, here), the improvements have been incremental, and hard to spot over time. But sometimes I encounter something and it just blows my mind how good desktop Linux has become.
I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed. This isn't anything new, but what really blew me away is that everything... just worked. No tinkering. No alternative modules built from source (hopefully with a good DKMS script). Everything... just worked. I'd blocked out a few hours to get everything working in a satisfactory state and... I had nothing to do, really.
And when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING, not just the features that were significant to my own use cases. Mind-blowing, if you think about it.

by ergonaught

2 subcomments

On my Windows machines, every time I have to click my Bluetooth icon, which is about a dozen times every day, the full second pause before it presents me with a menu makes me wish I didn't need Windows on two of my systems. It's mindbogglingly stupid that a UI element has a one second delay to present a menu on...any hardware, much less "2025" hardware.
But that's the kind of product they're shipping, because that's the kind of people they're employing, and that's the kind of decisions they're allowed to make. It permeates everything.

by TACIXAT

2 subcomments

I strongly agree on this. I mained Windows for the last few years and got to the point where I was comfortable doing development similarly to how I would on Linux (text editor and command line build tools, cl, ml64, batch, etc.). I did that mostly so I could game and develop on the same machine. I learned a ton doing it but it has just gotten too awful to carry on.
It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches. The start menu was laggy, explorer was laggy (open up a folder with a couple dozen OGG files and it won't render for a solid minute). Mystery memory usage from privileged processes I had little control over. Once I realized that the one game I play (Overwatch) ran on Linux I decided to swap back.
I installed Linux Mint earlier this year and I've been extremely happy. The memory consumption is stable and low, and if something is broken I have the control to fix it. It just feels so much less hostile. This is largely possible thanks to the work Steam has done with Proton. The last real barrier is kernel level anti-cheat which prevented me from trying out this years Call of Duty. Oh well!

by markus_zhang

1 subcomments

“They've managed to take some of their most revolutionary technological innovations (the NT kernel's hybrid design allowing it to restart drivers, NTFS, ReFS, WSL, Hyper-V, etc.) then just shat all over them”.
Well said. I wonder what the kernel team thinks about it.

by handbanana_

7 subcomments

I really don't understand what is different about my installs of Windows 11 compared to what I read in all these types of articles.
I have zero issues with the platform day in and day out with heavy workloads like Pro Tools and Unreal Engine devkit. Games run without stutter and issue, all my features are snappy, Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and gives decent results. I have tweaked a few settings but nothing you can't find in settings menus.
I'm not sure a lot of people having issues with pretty damn stable platform are going to have a better experience in something they have zero familiarity with and isn't exactly going to be intuitive when things go sideways, as they most undoubtedly will.

by ku1ik

0 subcomment

Here's a copy of my Mastodon post [1] from Oct 2025:
---
I had a job interview yesterday, which happened via Google Meet.
Even though I use my desktop Linux workstation and Firefox 99% of the time for everything, my first instinct was to do this interview on a MacBook and Chrome, to avoid surprises and not look unprofessional if something doesn't work, which has happened in the past. Last year, when I was asked to share the screen during a daily, I had to say "um, I'm sorry, Zoom and desktop sharing don't work on my system."
But I thought I'd first do a test on my workstation, just to see if maybe I shouldn't be concerned anymore. I was sceptical.
The ideal scenario was that on my standard GNOME 48 / Wayland / PipeWire desktop I'd be able to use Firefox for this call, and AirPods, a Logitech webcam, and desktop sharing (5K ultrawide scaled at 125%) would just work with no tweaks whatsoever.
And it did!
I've been using Linux on the desktop for over 20 years (on and off, but mostly on) and I know how to hold my Linux systems, but the situation with Bluetooth audio and desktop sharing in previous years has been... spotty. I was less worried about AirPods — I switched to PipeWire ~3 years ago and so I know Linux audio has been rock-solid and pretty much solved already. But desktop sharing used to be hit-or-miss, highly dependent on whether you used X11 or Wayland, further complicated by the use of Flatpaks.
Since my test went well, I did the interview on the desktop machine. It went smoothly, with no surprises.
Therefore, I announce 2025 as the Year of the Linux desktop :)
[1] https://hachyderm.io/@ku1ik/115388713511052943

by thunderbong

2 subcomments

For the last few days I was trying to revive an old MacBook Air for a non-techie friend. It had 4 GB of RAM.
It had Catalina on it and was completely unusable. Hovering on anything would bring up the spinner which would take a couple of minutes to resolve itself.
I tried reinstalling the OS, which didn't help. The top recommendation was to revert to Mojave.
Finally, after three days of struggle, I gave up and installed Linux Mint.
The difference is absolutely unbelievable. Even heavy applications like LibreOffice and Zoom are snappy.
Apple makes such good hardware. I felt really sad about the state of their software compatibility with older machines.
So, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know one more person will be using Linux in 2026!

by nntwozz

2 subcomments

I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt until macOS 27 (but I'm still on 15.7.4 hehe).
Mac OS X and Aqua wasn't very well received either at launch.
A similar thing happened with the flat design of iOS 7.
Apple's pattern is initially going overboard with a new design and then scaling it back slowly like a sculptor.
I think they're happy with this method, even if things miss at first the big changes usually create a lot of hype and excitement for the masses.
The vast majority of users don't care about the finer things, Apple knows that the nerds can sweat it out until they straighten things out at which point everyone is happy in a hero's journey kind of way.
I just hope this pattern stays true and that this isn't an inflection point.

by orochimaaru

3 subcomments

I've been using a system 76 laptop for the past 3 years. Runs perfectly, no surprises. Unfortunately, I need a mac for work because the laptop service folks do not know what to do with linux and do not have a relationship with a vendor like system76.
Pros: The best development experience you can have. Everything is native linux. There is no beating that. This of course will be a problem if hobbies/work use windows. I've never been a windows person. So I've never missed it. Power and peripherals work on the system76 seamlessly.
Cons: Battery life. Runs out in about 2.5 hrs but its an AMD not an ARM.
I did run linux on a tower exclusively while I did my PhD. Did everything on it - code, writing my thesis in LaTeX, store data, connect to dropbox for backup, watch netflix, etc.
You're not missing much by dumping windows.

by jama211

5 subcomments

This post does examplefy what we’re seeing, a general indication of some swelling of momentum but I bet it’s still going to be from 2% to maybe 3 or 5% at most until Linux can fix a few things about the community, issues with install difficulty such as dual booting and other issues, and the technical knowledge barrier to entry until more distribution with hardware comes along. Although of course system 76 and steam deck are great moves in this direction they’re still relatively niche for now.
There will never be a “year of the Linux desktop” the same way that there has never been a “year of the Mac desktop”, it’s just a slow building of users over time anyway.

by RachelF

1 subcomments

Windows has been my main operating system for the last 35 years (from version 2). I've used Linux and to a lessor extent BSD and Mac as well, but my main desktop has always been Windows, as it ran most of the apps that I needed.
Windows 11 UI and spyware are so bad, that Windows 10 is where my 35 years of using Windows as my main OS has ended.

by Alupis

2 subcomments

I've used Fedora on my laptop for over a decade. I switched my main home workstation to Fedora in 2023, and haven't looked back since.
My workstation runs Kinoite[1], an immutable/atomic version of Fedora. I started with Fedora 38, and now am running 43. Flawless major-release upgrades. I develop using distrobox[2] (pet containers) on podman. It "Just Works".
Nearly 99% of my Steam library is playable on Fedora too. Many games even have native Linux support these days - the rest run under Proton. The only games that won't play have windows-only kernel-level anti-cheat. For some of those games, it's a developer choice (there's apparently a checkbox to enable Linux support on EasyAntiCheat - and some don't "check" it).
I use Flatpaks to install many GUI apps, such as FreeCAD, KiCad, Darktable, Steam, Reaper, and a lot more.
It's a great, extremely stable system.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
[2] https://distrobox.it/

by ktpsns

1 subcomments

Best luck! My year of the Linux desktop has been 2006, so it's now 20 years (with a short 5yrs relapse around 2012). I never look back.
(Similarities to smoking cessation are neither coincidental nor intentional, but unavoidable.)

by kakadu

4 subcomments

I ve been a happy user of debian stable for 15 years now, if I could get a Linux laptop with a comparable battery life to apple's then it's done for me.
I think linux people tend to forget how important battery life is on a laptop

by the__alchemist

3 subcomments

Wishlist:

  - No sudo, or at least no conflict between "Sudo is dangerous and can break your system" / "You need sudo to do routine things"
  - Executable compatibility across distro versions and distros
  - No CLI required to install software
  - Lag-free pen experience
  - Good touch support
  - Less fragile. I shouldn't have to worry about the PC booting up into a no-GUI terminal after I installed something, or edited a file. (See point 1; don't make me edit system files to do routine stuff like communicate with a USB device without sudo, if they can break the system)
  - Focus on speed, and clawing back the performance losses that have been accumulating in all OSs over the years
  - Let me open an application by double-clicking it

I would love to ditch Windows and its corporate BS, but the UX is IMO not there yet. I am running a Ubuntu 24 Laptop for work and it's generally fine as I run only a small set of software, but historically things get messy when I install a broader range of software or use non-typical hardware. So, not better than Win yet for my personal uses

Bonus: Something like PowerToys. I recognize this diverges from core OS functionality.

by kshanowski

0 subcomment

Glad linux works for many. Personally I've switched to windows 10 ltsc on my work laptop. Main reason for it was the scaling issues with hidpi monitors that I connect/disconnect frequently. I think scaling is better on win and no issues with any blurry app or font or anything related. I also think its faster for my tasks, supports hibernation and has better power management. The other thing was that I'm a tinkerer and under linux I've lost countless hours with optimization and tweaking. I've always monitored and had to had everything under control. Windows takes it out of my head, so I could finally work. Still linux on my desktop tho.

by etempleton

3 subcomments

I do think Linux is accessible to many more people, but I would not say it is ready for the masses. The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average computer user.
But, with that said, I started seriously using Linux for the first time in 2025. I bounce between Debian, Windows 11, and MacOS, and Debian is probably the most refreshing to use. I don’t find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have turned off most of what people cite as the issues. I find MacOSs Liquid Glass redesign to be more aggressively bad.

by aprilnya

1 subcomments

> I haven't booted into Windows in over 3 months on my tower and I'm starting to realize that it's not worth wasting the space for.
Kind of glad to read this, I went into it thinking it will be another person saying "I'll use Linux forever!" the day after installing it, similar to everyone who says their new years resolution is to work out more, then proceeds to go to the gym 2 times total :)
(oh, and then, I noticed this is Xe!)

by harel

2 subcomments

Maybe I'm more tolerant, but for me Linux was ready for the desktop in 2005 and windows 11 is ok for what I use it for (cubase and games). When I switched my laptop from Windows XP it was a test. 3 years later I noticed I didn't boot back into windows not even once so concluded the test successful. My desktop later was windows only because cubase (and later steam) runs on it, but I honestly don't mind. However, I had to do some development on windows once for a client and that was indeed a horrible experience.

by xattt

5 subcomments

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft right now, to see if they are in red alert to get users back, planning subterfuge by breaking APIs used by Wine or what have you, or if they are taking it as a loss.
I recently jumped to Debian/KDE as a daily driver, and it feels great. I am coming after many years of running Linux via cli on my home server. I am also unironically enjoying wobbly windows.

by basisword

0 subcomment

There is something massive missing from Linux that for me has made it even less likely that I would use it full-time (I've tinkered with it in my youth): personal data. I have so much personal, important data generated regularly thanks to smartphones. Photos, videos, voice memos, notes, computer files I want to access anywhere, health data etc. etc. iOS/Mac has made this seamless, secure, and in 15-20 years it has not gone wrong for me. Sure there are horror stories posted from time to time but for 99.9% of people it works really well almost all of the time. Replicating this with Linux systems is difficult, requires lots of setup and maintenance, and incurs significant risk for me in terms of data loss.

by petabyt

1 subcomments

I've spent the past 8 years going back and forth between Linux and Windows. When I switched back to Linux last year I was shocked how well steam/proton/wine worked compared to a few years prior. Valve is truly making incredible progress.

by cjk

2 subcomments

Yeah. I feel the same way. If not for the fact that my gaming PC pulls double duty as a work PC, I'd seriously consider ditching Windows 11 for Bazzite.
I worry that we are edging closer and closer to a similar phenomenon with macOS as well. Apple seems intent on squandering every bit of stability and sanity that macOS used to represent. Maybe now that Alan Dye is gone, we will at least see the abomination that is Liquid Glass fixed…somehow.

by MarkSweep

1 subcomments

I made the switch as well. For many years I dual-booted Ubuntu and Windows, hanging on to my familiarity with Windows and love for Visual Studio. Finally October 2025 some update made games laggy on Windows while they still worked fine on Ubuntu. I attempted to fix this by reinstalling Windows 11 and found I could not figure out how to remove advertisements from the start menu. So I finally transferred all my files from ReFS to ZFS and committed to 100% Linux.
Something has gone wrong in Microsoft in the product management organization where they are more concerned with chasing advertising dollars and upselling OneDruge than building a good product. It is depressing because all the Microsoft engineers I’ve interacted with in open source work have been excellent.

by Kon5ole

0 subcomment

I think the main problem for Linux is the fragmentation and lack of focus. If you can live without the Adobe suite and such, any number of distros and desktops can serve you well, but it often tries to do so
An initiative like Omarchy got a lot of traction just by "picking one" of all the infinite options available, writing decent documentation for how it all works in Omarchy specifically, and having the whole thing install in minutes.
Omarchy and tiling VM's are not for everyone but I think the principles are great, and can surely be applied to other DE's as well.

by QuiEgo

0 subcomment

I’ve reached the point where I just use a Mac for most computer stuff and a console for gaming. Maybe one day I’ll set up a Linux gaming box but after spending all day at work trying to wrangle Linux boxes, that sounds a bit too much like my job to be relaxing.

by teleforce

1 subcomments

Every year starting back around the year 2000, every year until now there's always at least an article from Slashdot and then HN on the year of the Linux desktop from believers and non-believers alike [1],[2].
[1] Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop (2023):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33213663
[2] Why there should never be a "year of the Linux desktop" (2009):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821673

by iamcalledrob

0 subcomment

Same.
After decades of macOS, and a bit of Windows, I tried Linux again recently and it was... good? For the first time in 20+ years, I ran into no big issues and no need to switch back.
The new UI stuff happening in Gnome-land, while controversial, has started to make the desktop feel modern and cohesive.
After years of Windows Explorer, clicking around in ~~Nautilus~~Files felt so snappy. The built-in Gnome document viewer is fantastic.
Gnome is starting to show glimmers of being the natural evolution of the Mac desktop, not a poor imitation -- which is very exciting.

by sandreas

2 subcomments

Long time Linux Desktop user here. I really think Linux is a great choice as a Desktop in days of liquid glass and webviews. There are a lot of choices to make, but in the end it is working out really well (at least for me). KDE and the new COSMIC desktop environment with tiling support are tempting, but for now I keep using GNOME until I have more time to check them out.
The things I personally had problems with is BTRFS and printers. BTRFS was completely irrecoverable after a system crash, full story see here [1]. Since I've read a lot of these horror stories while doing some research after the crash, I would encourage everyone using it to be careful and backup your system on a daily basis. I switched to ZFS with ZFSBootMenu[2] and never looked back.
Printer-wise, I have a Canon network printer / scanner which seems to use a strange proprietary protocol. On Fedora everything worked fine while on Arch I did not find a way to get this thing working (I tried hard with different options like driverless, gutenprint, cupsd etc.) - printing also seems to be a bit of a security nightmare when changing firewall settings is mandatory.
Everything else is working absolutely stunning.
1: https://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=13013
2: https://github.com/sandreas/zarch

by ecommerceguy

0 subcomment

I'll toss in my 2 cents: 1. people that have no business whatsoever now know what linux is ie sales dawgs that only touch a computer for the occasional spreadsheet. 2. 70 year old man fed up with windows, moved to linux. it looks great, its fast and responsive let's make this happen.

by dbcooper

1 subcomments

https://x.com/EnterpriseCPU/status/1972103355012124891?s=20

by polyterative

0 subcomment

Given the current situation regarding the hardware getting more pricey, I was so fed up with the inconsistencies, the constant micro lagging frame rate drops that I finally bit the bullet on a Mac studio a couple of weeks ago. This happened after 17 years of being a Windows user and having built more than 20 machines unfortunately Linux does not have a lot commercial software that I needed

by gethly

0 subcomment

It will take few more years before people start abandoning W10 due to security concerns(somehow "hackers" always find some insane backdoors and bugs in old windows, it must be a pure coincidence), hardware upgrade or just need to reinstall. But indeed, it looks like Linux is finally taking over. I'd say that beside Microsoft being so bad at their job, it's Valve and gaming on Linux in general. It's actually doable. What a miracle!

by prhn

3 subcomments

I only really ever play one game, so that's not a blocker for me.
I would have switched by now but film and audio production software, including VSTs, don't seem to be greatly supported on Linux. I'd love to hear from someone if you are successfully doing this.

by SamDc73

1 subcomments

> then just shat all over them with start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews, and forcing Copilot down everyone's throats
Thank god I've been using Linux long enough to not experience any of that.
At my job in a large non-tech company, almost everyone uses Windows (except for the dev team) purely because of Microsoft Office. As long as that thing exists, they can do all the dumb things they want and still dominate.

by hifikuno

2 subcomments

Maybe someone here knows a solution. The ONLY thing keeping me on windows is that my employer uses F5/Big IP edge clients. I cannot find a Linux client that can also handle Web SSO. Does anyone have any Linux experience with this?

by temp0826

0 subcomment

Welcome...1998 was my year of the Linux desktop. Valve seems to have been dredging all of the "maybe"s over the last few years on a few different fronts. Big ups to them (not that they don't get enough praise...still!)

by 8bitsrule

1 subcomments

Considering how the load at Linux Mint's forums has recently increased to the point that some of it is being re-directed to gitHummed (a minute ago there were "3362 users online :: 35 registered, 3 hidden and 3324 guests" >10 secs to respond, needed to login), it appears that distro at least is seeing a lot of newcomers.

by josefritzishere

2 subcomments

I am one full page ad away from deleting Windows 11 forever. I will struggle through infinite driver compatibility issues before I sit through a single ad while trying to work. That is my redline.

by rubyn00bie

1 subcomments

I've been using Linux as my desktop since 2020, I switched because I wanted to play games and maintain a development environment I'm familiar with (having run Linux servers for ~15 years at that point) that would be stable. I had long used a Windows machine for gaming and a Mac laptop for development. My Mac was stable enough, but Windows was not-- it wasn't blue screens it was constant unpredictable updates (sometimes erratically running when I didn't want them to). I had an SSD in the machine with Windows, but after installing Pop_OS! (as a happy accident) I never found a compelling reason to use Windows again.
Steam has worked perfectly, clicking install and then hitting play, no futzing with drivers or weird updates. The only games I haven't been able to play are League of Legends and some of the new AAA shooters. I'm okay with that because I don't particularly care at this point, and it's not worth maintaining a Windows install to periodically play for an hour or so.
Linux has been unbelievably stable. This year, I fully upgraded the system and planned on reinstalling but I didn't even need to. On first boot, my old install was picked up and mostly just worked. On Windows I've tried that before, and it was an unrelenting shit show (that resulted in having to nuke the old windows install).
The only hitch I've had was installing conflicting NVidia drivers (open source vs proprietary); which, I was able to fix by booting into the command line then nuking both sets of drivers via apt remove and installing the one I wanted. Took me less than five minutes and my system was working. It also wouldn't have happened if I hadn't tried being too clever (and Pop_OS! having some quirks).
I recently setup a MiniPC to use while traveling to game on and this time I tried Arch. To my surprise the install was ridiculously easy. The most recent installer makes it a breeze. My only mistake was not noticing I'd installed a few desktop environments and the default wasn't what I wanted so things seemed broken. After selecting KDE from the login menu et volia! It worked perfectly. I'm considering switching my primary rig to Arch, but I'll give the most recent Pop_OS! release a try to see if the newer LTS version gets me access to some new packages first.
Linux is great folks. If you stick with a major distro you're likely going to love it. It's really low maintenance and just works. 11/10 would recommend to anyone.

by timpera

1 subcomments

I don't really understand why everyone is complaining about Windows here, I'm not at all experiencing the same issues. The ARM64 version of W11 absolutely is the best OS I've ever used. I enjoy using Fedora but it's not coming close for professional use in my opinion.

by qaq

0 subcomment

MY NY resolution is to switch to Linux after two decades of using MacOS as primary OS. The UI direction, abysmal quality of software and people getting randomly banned from the ecosystem without good reason and with no recourse finally pushed me over the edge.

by mindcrash

0 subcomment

I've just finished the base install of Gentoo on my brand new Framework 16 and I still wonder why I didn't make the move sooner.
Hardware: HX370, 128G RAM, Radeon 860M iGPU, Radeon RX7700S dGPU, Xbox Wireless Cntroller, 2T + 8T SSD storage
Software (as of today, still making additions and refinements): Gentoo/OpenRC (I don't like systemd), Kernel 6.12.58 with additional module for the Xbox controller, Pipewire+EasyEffects 8, KDE Plasma 6.5.4/Wayland, Steam
Experience: KDE runs pretty stable, and only has the things I really need (and not the things a vendor thinks I need).
The first game I benchmarked today was Doom (2016), which runs smoothly on 90-120 fps on high settings.
The second game I benchmarked today was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024) running on ~56fps on recommended settings on the 7700.
The one game I tried today and could not get to run properly was Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl. I suspect that, given the many positives on ProtonDB, that's mainly either a configuration or Proton issue. I'll do some more research and give it another try in the near future. Right now performance drops to 5 fps immediately after starting a new game, and the CPU running on 600Mhz maximum when starting the game on Proton Experimental.
For now I am quite happy with the results, and the fact that I likely finally am able to eject Windows out of my life.

by ojr

1 subcomments

Windows still have the gamers. A lot of anti-cheat system completely block out Linux users. The Year of the Linux Desktop will still be a meme at the end of this year as well.

by cryptica

2 subcomments

I love the fact that there are different Linux distros optimized for every person.
I started using Linux almost a decade ago; starting with Ubuntu, then I moved to Kubuntu and now I'm on Omarchy which is even more optimized for developers.
I feel very comfortable recommending Linux to people now though I would recommend a different distro depending on who is asking.
IMO Ubuntu is the simplest general-purpose one. Kubuntu is the same but more customizable slightly more developer-focused. Omarchy (which is a fork of Arch Linux) is very developer-focused.

0 subcomment

by cromka

0 subcomment

Things like this don't help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081

by lkglglgllm

0 subcomment

Heavily invested in Microsoft tech, but not using windows. At all. Couldn’t be happier.
Due to word being too buggy, I switched to libre office in windows. Local outlook was also too buggy in windows, I ended up running the web version. Switched to vscode b/c VS was to buggy and slow.
Teams works better in macos. Web version of teams is ok in Linux, you don’t want to run the native app in windows, it’s a resource hog written as a web app anyway.
Dotnet and powershell (pwsh) actually works better in both macos and in Linux, than in windows. Not a little better, but much better, that ecosystem is very stable and reliable.
And azure has of course no dependency on any local windows, on the contrary, dealing with remote systems are easier in Linux, particular if you accessing remote Linux systems as well.
Then I realized there was no reason to run windows. At all. It will only drag you down when it comes to productivity, it’s an awful os, filled with malware and other shit.

by nialv7

2 subcomments

Actually surprised that Xe wasn't already a Linux user.

by yakattak

0 subcomment

> At the very least, when something goes wrong on Linux you have log messages that can let you know what went wrong so you can search for it.
It is hilarious how accurate this is. When something crashes on Windows you better hope it has its own logs you can find because the OS itself will tell you nothing. Event Viewer can't hold a candle to journald!

by dplesh

1 subcomments

I'm a windows user since I was 5. My favorite OS. both for home and for professional environment. Seems that Windows 11 will be the last Microsoft OS I'll ever use

by whalesalad

1 subcomments

Been following this blog for a while and this is the last person I would have expected to be a Windows user.

by newsoftheday

0 subcomment

I run Kubuntu on this gaming machine (AlienWare) and I run it on my 16 year old Dell laptop I used for work back then. Runs great and with RAM prices high and people looking to make their older machines useful instead of trashing them, there's a really good chance they can run Linux.

by loumf

1 subcomments

I recently switched to Linux for all development. I still use my Mac for everything else.
The main reason was to protect my personal data from possible supply chain issues or LLM agent mishaps.
I’m 99% in VSCode, a browser, and a terminal. There’s hardly a difference day-to-day.

by fainpul

0 subcomment

Let's use the influx of new users to get some money flowing!
It would be great if all those "I switched to Linux" articles would mention a few ways to donate to some important projects, helping to make FOSS thrive.

by ideasphere

0 subcomment

2026 will certainly be the year of the 'I'm switching to Linux' thinkpieces

by 6ak74rfy

0 subcomment

For me, 2025 was the year of the Linux desktop. I wanted a replacement for an M1, something beefy to build side projects etc., so I custom built a PC and put NixOS on it. Still rocking it and quite happy with it.

by rd07

0 subcomment

Funny that at the last minute of 2025 (at least in my country), I wrote a blog post titled "2025 is the Year of Linux Desktop, at least for me".
It is just a short post to note about how in 2025 some of my friends are finally migrating to Linux. And that was something awesome for me.
https://blog.juliardi.com/2025-is-the-year-of-linux-desktop-...

0 subcomment

by woile

0 subcomment

Last year I got a laptop with Linux, after a Mac gap of 6 years (work) and it's been super smooth with NixOS and KDE.
My main issue now was the 16GB of RAM using a VM and working on rust, which would kill the system, but now I have more, so all the issues are gone.
One of the machines has become a media-center, with a remote keyboard, anyone at home can operate now.
Multiple screens, bluetooth, drag and drop, night/light all seems to be working

by faraixyz

0 subcomment

Tempted to do the same. Like it’s a good OS but Microsoft seems intent to drive it into the ground by being insanely annoying. PowerToys is the only bright spot right now.

by hexbin010

1 subcomments

So I just tried KDE with Fedora 43 on a 4 year old Intel Dell laptop (I've used Linux pretty extensively for 15+ years). It's hilariously bad :
- I managed to make a process crash just clicking around the Settings app
- Sleep doesn't work (spins up the fans, then turns them down, then turns off off displays etc but I then the fan are spinning, so something is running). Looking at the menu, supposedly Firefox is 'blocking' sleep, but I blocked it, and that just meant the fans stayed spun up during sleep. Wtf?
- Monitor connected via dock via USB-C only worked after I plugged it directly into the laptop then back into the dock
- WiFi is preferenced over Ethernet (?!)
- KDE default panel is 'floating' which means wasted pixels below it. Looks ugly and wastes precious vertical space. And the blue highglight of the active window is over the top. And the default panel height is 44 pixels!
- Default fonts especially in Konsole look ugly on a 1920x1080 laptop LCD.
- Booting takes forever
- Impressive it can stream to Homepods out the box...but it cuts out when you open the sound widget in the taskbar. And also at random points
- The default pop-up notifications are too numerous
- The Night Light quick option is to suspend it, not to enable it. Which is interesting, as it's not enabled currently. I want to enable it! There is no option to once-off enable.
EDIT:
- And during boot, the LVM2 unlock is only shown on the built-in display. Then the Login Screen is kind of mirrored, but updates are only shown on the external display ?! (ie password characters not filled in on the built-in display). Very odd
I love Linux, and MacOS might be turning into iOS and becoming buggier, but MacOS has none of those issues.

by Havoc

2 subcomments

This rings true...outside of users that play competitive FPS...the anticheat continues to be a challenge
As a side note - if you're in that venn diagram overlap group of linux and gaming...check out "beyond all reason" RTS if you haven't. High chance it'll tickle you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxwIxz4PaY
edit: not affiliate to linked yt - organic enthusiastism

by lelele

0 subcomment

There is no such thing as "desktop Linux". What we have instead is a large collection of distros, each with its own UX, unlike Windows or macOS which present a relatively unified platform.
I switched to Linux many years ago because a new laptop was unusably slow under the Windows Vista it came with, and I have not looked back since, yet I'd never recommend Linux to "the masses". Linux can work well for people who just browse the web and read email. Beyond that, the experience quickly becomes dependent on having a knowledgeable person nearby to help with choosing software and supported hardware or troubleshooting it.
To me, articles like this show how disconnected many technically inclined people are from average users' experience. Things like bloated software or aggressive advertising may be annoying to us, but to most users they are just part of using a computer.

by ivanb

1 subcomments

It will be mine as well but only because consumer agentic AI became available and good. Only it makes all quirks and hardware incompatibilities bearable. I tell it to investigate the problem and it does an incredible amount of digging to help find the cause and eventually, after several iteration, either fix it or implement a good enough crutch. Even then it takes minutes to hours and I would take months.

by hexbin010

0 subcomment

BTRFS is certainly adventurous. That's one way to make sure you have a good backup policy in place.
Corey (a character of mine) says stick with ext4.

by vlod

0 subcomment

With the new PopOS Cosmic and them dumping GNOME for their own UI framework based on Iced [0] (and based on rust), I have high hopes that things will move to more linux (especially for folks here who are rust-heads).
[0]: https://iced.rs/

by prism56

0 subcomment

I started using Linux Mint on my Framework laptop. That's 99% of my desktop usage. I do have a gaming PC that's rarely used that I keep for windows. Mainly for the odd game and/or the odd windows thing but it's pretty rare since nearly all my gaming is now on my Steam Deck.

by wazoox

0 subcomment

For me Windows XP was the intolerably ugly release that made me switch once and for all in 2002. Never looked back.

by tormeh

0 subcomment

I have to use Windows sometimes at work, and of all indignities, this is surely a small one, but it is an indignity. Everyone complains about ads, which is a real issue, but to me the biggest issue is how blatantly suboptimal everything is. Nobody has put any effort into making Windows good for a very very long time. The terminal and/or powershell is incredibly slow - ls should not take perceptible time to execute. The settings menus are made with 3 to 5 different layers of UI frameworks and design guidelines. Forced OneDrive. The pestering about copilot... I even like LLMs, but my user experience is so clearly subordinate to some KPI that it annoys me anyway. I'm sure I could come up with more if I had touched it recently, but I thankfully haven't.

by abustamam

0 subcomment

I installed Ubuntu in October just to play around with AI models (python and CLI in general was so hard to deal with in Windows) and I realized that I didn't ever need to boot back into windows, not for gaming, not for anything. It was really relieving.

by panick21_

1 subcomments

There are still so many issues around Wayland and fragmentation. Gnome is the most popular and has lots of issues and sometimes is downright user hostile. Luckily some of the distributions try to revert some of the insanity sometimes. But there are still many protocols and portals needed and much more standardization.

by gorgoiler

0 subcomment

Proprietary, closed user experiences are like microwave home dinners. There’s every reason to hope they can be good, it is very common for them to be crap, and while its possible to hack your own microwave meals you will be doing so in a sub optimal environment with limited options.
An open, modular, diverse UX is like having a stocked kitchen of staples, pans, tools, fresh produce, and a stove. You add a toaster oven, smoker, water bath, grow a kitchen garden of your own, find local butchers and fishmongers. Over time you build up a small collection of both your own and others’ recipes and books and articles on food theory and trends. You can also have a microwave of course, but you’ll use it in many different ways than before.
It’s harder work but so is walking instead of driving or reading instead of watching TV. It can seem irritatingly virtuous to some that you put this extra effort into your daily life but they’ll be swayed when they see you serve up a ZFS snapshot to temporarily test an edit over 20GB of data, or pop up a new niri workspace to track and purchase concert tickets, or dive into editing your journal in a custom distraction free mode you put together showing only your editor and this week’s GPS logs.
You aren’t making everything from scratch, but you do make a few ingredients yourself — pickles and bread in the kitchen and scripts and local web hacks on your computer — and you certainly have complete control over the finished product in a way that simply isn’t possible with a microwave and a boxed lasagna, or a copy of Windows 11.
You don’t even have to cook! You can have pre-made microwave meals with a Linux desktop. They still taste better because they were made with love by a global network of friends and family instead of by Nestlé, Kraft, and Heinz.

by socialcommenter

0 subcomment

I do what I can by serving webapps from my Linux server, or using command line, but I haven't had much success with a Linux RDP or VNC server that can compete with MS RDP for performance. If I could do that I'd switch fully. Does anyone have recommendations?

by InfiniteQwert

0 subcomment

Are there any alternatives to Lightroom that are not as complex or overwhelming as Darktable. I understand that people say it’s more powerful, but it also looks like it has a steep learning curve I’m not particularly interested in tbh.

by wkjagt

0 subcomment

Maybe Microsoft knows Windows is terrible and won't last forever, so their short term goal is to exploit their marketshare as much as possible to grab as much cash as they can until the market moves to something else.

by mcswell

0 subcomment

I switched to Linux from Win11 a few months ago, because of all the CoPilot junk. Not sure what the native vs. HTML UIs is all about, though. Are the HTML UIs slower, or is it a question of developers' time?

by yewenjie

1 subcomments

Wait didn't xeiaso use NixOS?
https://xeiaso.net/talks/asg-2023-nixos/

by jjaksic

0 subcomment

"I'm going to go with Fedora on my tower and Bazzite (or SteamOS) on my handhelds."
Why not Bazzite on both? Bazzite is a fantastic desktop OS! Easier to use than naked Fedora and virtually unbreakable.

by pkaodev

0 subcomment

Funnily enough today windows pissed me off with a random breaking bug (no login screen yay) so now only have Ubuntu installed. Only one application I use that's windows only anyways and can use a VM for that, so sayonara...

by spankibalt

0 subcomment

I'll still be a Windows/Unix dual user. But then again I don't do the Windows "Home version" experience so many here seem eager to humiliate themselves with over and over.

by wannabe_loser

0 subcomment

I have been using arch for a while now everything is good except BIOS updates after which I need to reset & fix secure boot everytime

by benbristow

1 subcomments

Cool, see you back on Windows in a month. There's always something. It'll be like the New Year's resolution of going to the gym.

0 subcomment

by WackyFighter

0 subcomment

> TL;DR: 2026 is going to be The Year of The Linux Desktop for me. I haven't booted into Windows in over 3 months on my tower and I'm starting to realize that it's not worth wasting the space for.
Similarly I haven't booted up Windows in months now. Debian is super stable as a desktop OS and does everything I want at it now.
I am in this weird position where I am keeping a Windows installation around just in case I need it for something. I had a one job interview where they wanted me to use Visual Studio (C#) and it turned out they were fine with me using Rider anyway.

by Forgeties79

0 subcomment

Been bazzite-only since April and I love it

by colordrops

0 subcomment

Niri + DankMaterialShell is an amazing desktop experience. I've heard great things about the COSMIC DE as well.

by flakiness

0 subcomment

The sad part of this narrative is that Linux Desktop can be a thing, mostly because other options have gotten worse/enshittified vs Linux Desktop itself has gotten better (It has, but it is probably not the reason of the rise.)

by djaouen

1 subcomments

See, now this is how a website *should* look: mainly text, with non-obtrusive ads at the bottom. It's really not that hard!

by ihaveone

0 subcomment

I already switched to Cachyos. It's Arch based with really good defaults.

by gverrilla

0 subcomment

Been playing with linux for 20y or so. Used it to program, mostly. Now after 15 days only of having Claude Code I'm flipping my setup to delete windows and have ubuntu as my main. I've never been so happy using a computer in my entire life: in this short time I already have dozens of customizations, custom scripts, opensource stuff personal custom forks, etc. Not to mention the fixes, oh so many fixes that could have taken DAYS of work from me and got solved by cc in minutes.
I even tried vibecoding my own custom text editor to use for todo and notes management, but that didn't go quite well lmao. (if anyone curious about my journey: after that I vibe-coded a Sublime Text 4 plugin that kinda worked, then I discovered Dynalist and it's more structured experience was a big hit. When I found out with Dynalist I didn't own my data, I tried other outliners (liked none), then I spent a couple of days trying to sort out some sort of scheme to use Obsidian similarly to Dynalist, didn't look too promising and also Obsidian is not open source, so now I'm finally trying Emacs (spacemacs) for the first time in my life for org-mode. Wish me luck!)

by bilsbie

3 subcomments

I wish iPhone users had a new os option. iOS is getting so unbearable with each update.

by linusr

1 subcomments

“for me” - this should had been in the title but missed out.
Linux has got better but not yet there.

by eviks

2 subcomments

> I think that Linux on the desktop is ready for the masses now, not because it's advanced in a huge leap/bound.
Yeah, right, these types of shallow pieces about Linux "for the masses" have the same structure without addressing the obvious issues:
- Windows has the following 3 components that became worse.
Well, they were bad 10 years ago (the ones that existed), so you could've spent a few hours per component to replace it (Start menu), disable it (Copilot), or find a workaround (invoke process manager with a shortcut without going through the webview in ctrl-alt-del or maybe there is some non-web app the presents the same menu of a few items) or even just ingore it (what are the serious practical issues with using dumb webviews for a tiny menu?)
But the alternative would require you spending many days learning the whole new OS where many things you're used to would simply not exist.
Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that does it.
Got tired of the File Explorer garbage and got used to the greatness of Opus? Well, good luck, there is not a single great file manager over there
Want to relax and play X, Y, Z games? Oops, only A, B, C have good support, will take another decade to fix that (but at least someone is working on that)
Want to use your favorite Productivity/VideoShop app? No one is even working on that, so another decade would not fix that.
So how is it reasonable (for the masses, not you!) to replace a few fixable annoyances with a bigger list of the same and an even bigger list of unfixable stuff?

by lobito25

2 subcomments

Judging by the website repo readme.md, the developer seems very obnoxious.

by gingersnap

0 subcomment

I've been using Linux now as my personal desktop OS for 10-15 years. I actually really liked windows, and still think that windows XP and 7 was great OS for me. My Linux mint is still in style of the old windows versions.
But this year I used windows at a new work, and tested using my wife's windows computer. And for the first time I really feel it's shit.
First when I moved to Linux, 10-15 years ago, windows was better and smoother. 10-5 years ago Linux was getting close and worked equally for everyday, only being problem when things really break. Now is the first time that Linux actually is equal and probably overtakes windows. Microsoft making the move of discontinuation windows 11 puts the nail in the coffin
So I agree, 2026 is the year of Linux desktop.

by dmix

0 subcomment

If I didnt have a macbook from work I'd use Linux, but I got a macbook

by gorfian_robot

2 subcomments

my 2017 mac air is getting real long in the tooth. I'd definitely considering switching to *nix with it but everything I keep reading is that process is not so easy.

by xs4ndro

0 subcomment

2026 marks the year of IPv6 and Linux on the desktop.

by amelius

4 subcomments

My main problem with Linux is that I have to trust all the applications that I install (unless I am willing to do an extreme amount of sysadmin which I am not). On a smartphone at least I can easily assign permissions to each app.

by bradley13

0 subcomment

Welcome to the club. After years of dual-booting, I deleted my Windows partition a few years ago.
And it's not just techies. My non-technical brother-in-law asked me to install Linux for him last fall. I installed Xubuntu, showed him how everything worked, and haven't had a single "support call" since.

by bobek

0 subcomment

Welcome ;) Linux is my desktop last 20+ years.

by bibimsz

0 subcomment

cachyos has been rock solid for me, including gaming. nvidia 40xx series, HDR OLED monitor

by billy99k

0 subcomment

Good luck. I've tried to completely replace Windows with Linux over the last two decades or so, and it's still lacks polish. I really don't enjoy having half-written GUIs for different apps and having to compile my own fixes after searching for 3 hours.
I think I finally gave it up in anger, when it was on a laptop I was using for a few important projects and it cost me days of work.
I now use Windows+WSL and it has the best of both worlds: A fully functional GUI with everything I would ever need with Linux.
MacOS is really the best Nix Desktop OS out there. I would use this instead, but I still require some windows apps.

by voxleone

1 subcomments

Welcome to the Linux desktop club. One small heads-up from experience: if you’re running NVIDIA hardware, expect a few bumps along the way. The proprietary drivers work well once set up, but kernel updates, Wayland quirks, and driver installs can be more hands-on than with AMD or Intel. Not a dealbreaker, just something to be aware of.
Overall though, solid choice. Hope 2026 really is your year of the Linux desktop.

by neogodless

0 subcomment

I believe this was Dec. 2023 through Feb. 2024 (I should add dates to my little "blog"...):
https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm
If I remember, Linux Mint was on kernel 5.15 at the time.
The TL;DR is that fractional scaling was broken under Cinnamon, and Brightness controls were broken under KDE.
Most gaming was good, but a brand new game (Hogwart's Legacy) had major issues, including crashing and vastly worse performance compared to Windows. Another game wouldn't work with multiplayer (Anno 1800) which meant I couldn't play it with my spouse.
So I'm tempted to go back, give Linux 6.8 or 6.11 a try, and see if those issues are fixed. (I sold that laptop to a family member, so I'd probably try it on a newer Legion 5 Pro, but still with Nvidia graphics.)
For my primary machine though... what I would miss most is DxO PhotoLab. I love my Fujifilm XT-5 and mirrorless photography, and I love editing with DxO. I tried Lightroom, darktable, and a few other pieces of software, but I kept going back to PhotoLab. It's not objective - it's very subjective but I get the most joy out of using PhotoLab for editing.
I really hope (like throw a wish in a bottle) that companies like DxO consider supporting Linux[0] but I doubt it's even on their radar. Software like this uses hardware in demanding ways, and it isn't trivial to support it.
Now, this is one person's anecdote, but I do think it's a factor in overall mainstream acceptance. For Linux users, after years or decades of use, they've embraced the software available to them, but for Windows / macOS users, they will often have to consider what compromises they'll have to make. (I know Adobe is thrown around a lot, and it's a fine example, but I don't like Adobe's subscription model... I still gave it a fair shake but enjoyed PhotoLab much more!) But I think my point will still be that there's a chicken-and-egg scenario, and it's taking a very long time to get Linux to the kind of market share it needs to start forcing the hands of the thousands of companies that don't currently support Linux.
[0] https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406558299537-Syst...

by yigalirani

0 subcomment

where is ChromeOS in this story

by Havoc

0 subcomment

Among the average hn reader...I think it'll stick.
Wider man on street, less sure
As for me - having a good time on linux

by darubedarob

3 subcomments

Saw a fascinating talk on gui and ui development today, lamenting the stagnation at M$ and apple when it comes to desktop computing (including browsing).
" there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline" and that sentence rings like a bell of all the problems.

by LePetitPrince

0 subcomment

[dead]

by gogasca

0 subcomment

[dead]

by bschmidt25010

0 subcomment

[dead]

by tedk-42

0 subcomment

See you in 2027 with the same prediction!

by NoMoreNicksLeft

1 subcomments

This headline couldn't be more absurd. Who cares... computing ceased being desktop-centric 12 or 15 years ago.

by debo_

0 subcomment

People loudly declaring they are switching to Linux feel to me like people loudly declaring they are leaving Twitter. That's nice? I've had my home machines on Linux since forever and it's fun. I like trying new distros about once a year to see what people are up to. It's been possible to run a basic setup for normies for a solid decade now, it's unfortunate that it took Microsoft waging UX war for some techies to notice.

by anonnon

0 subcomment

Wait, does Xe not know about this? https://www.thurrott.com/dev/330980/microsoft-to-replace-all...
But more seriously, it's pretty ironic to see all of these posts on HN, a supposed "tech" community, about switching to Linux, especially the comments describing how it defied their low expectations (tacitly revealing their own lack of prior first-hand experience). You never would have seen this on Slashdot 20 years ago, where dual booting Linux (or some BSD, despite it dying) was the minimum "geek cred" to not be seen as a poser.
And this was at a time when distros were far less user-friendly and had far more hardware compatibility issues and far less support for running Windows software.

by 7e

11 subcomments

They're going from Microsoft to... Linux. From bad to worse. Just use macOS and get on with your life.