I also don't care about "OS-maxxing", either--quibbling over 'Wayland', or which OS has the best window manager, arguing about 'gaming', etc.

What I do care about? Freedom and control. Linux gives me that.

So my desktop? It's Linux. The Year of Linux on the Desktop arrived for me years ago. And it can be that year for anyone, anytime. Today.

Why would agents want GUIs made for humans? It's already the case that, like everyone who's good at computers, agents want a terminal and good APIs, not some ad-ridden crap.

If anything, AI is a reason why it will never be the year of the linux desktop but also it doesn't matter anymore, because if the higher-order bit of productivity is defined by AI, then my tmux+vim is as good as your Visual Studio.

Most of LLM world is kind of anti-linux right now because the most popular LLMs are walled off by these huge companies and hella expensive. At some point, a nerd will realize they could hack together a surprisingly ok homebrew version of what everybody else is using, and do. Then a company realizes that they can build a brand on the anarchist, grassroots vibe of the homebrew thing, and capitalize its development (software development, but also community development, which is brand development for the company). Now, it’s much later, but the open source thing is competitive, and popular for being open-source.

At one point I got interested in why Red Hat handed over tens of millions of dollars in stock to Linus leading up to their IPO, in exchange for…nothing specific. Nominally it was a gift of appreciation, but handing out random gifts is somewhat opposed to maximizing shareholder returns. It’s because Linus controls merges to the Linux kernel and doesn’t have to care about Red Hat, and the board wanted him to care at least a little bit. They were stuck between “people trust our business because it’s built on this populist OS” and “this populist OS is mostly controlled by a guy who doesn’t work for us.” It’s hard to have one without the other.

I’m glad Apple is taking accessibility seriously, and I wish accessibility worked better on Linux, but I don’t think Linux is ever going to make developers “do their homework,” because the community wouldn’t trust a Linux like that. If the author is right, it’ll happen because “AI for the People, Inc.” builds a business on it and sponsors the work.

From the outside view, I still wouldn't make any bets with 100% certainty about the future of anything to do with computers.

If you grant that there is some chance that the trends of programming models' capabilities will continue for another few years, then there is some chance that software and its bottlenecks will be completely transformed. A rapidly overhauled accessibility tree for linux? A good-enough computer use model that doesn't require accessibility trees at all? A world of bespoke, personalized operating systems? All of these things (and many more) seem like outcomes with non-zero probabilities.

We have seen a bigger push to get everything using XDG config dirs in recent years, and also getting everything working on Wayland. These to me seem similar, other than that this accessibility standard would be even more niche, and if it was stated upfront to be made with AI in mind, I think there would be resistance.

Personally I do not want to let an AI tool run loose on my machine, but I do like having ways to script and automate stuff. I like Sway's IPC and that every keybind is also a command you could run. So the explanation of Apple's accessibility stuff sounds cool. I wish I had something like Unity's HUD where I could use a search to select from any depth of graphical menus in a given program instead of having to poke around by hand. If the accessibility standard were like that and allowed more stuff to be done from the CLI more easily, that would be great.

Now use that Accessibility Inspector tool inside Slack (an Electron App) and you'll be welcomed to a deeply nested tree of unlabelled objects.

*macos26 introduced a multitude of accessibility regressions that have real-world impact on humans with disabilities, let alone AI

I don't care much about agents though, I sure see as potentially useful some desktop assistant, and that is that.

Currently, OSS (etc) OSes are synonymous with Linux; I don't think I will ever see eye to eye with the Linux design philosophy; too many compromises which prioritize servers, multi-user IT systems; embraces scattered state across the FS etc.

I live in the terminal and that means I can speak the same language as agents[0], but I'm human and also enjoy GUIs and TUIs.

  There is no reason a machine can't be usable by normal people AND make power users happy

But your power users are the ones who write programs, fix bugs, and do free work that makes your product more valuable. Apple/others would still make money on every app even if they were to stop taking a cut of sales and stop charging money for developer licenses. They make money by selling the fucking hardware and shipping the OS. They create the environment, they create the default base experience. But no one buys a smartphone or computer without installing new software. Being able to do that is the reason these products are do great.

That's the real reason Linux is starting to win. Because Microsoft and Apple have lost touch. They got greedy, egotistical[1], and myopic.

[0] people keep asking me if it's worth learning now with AI. Bash and terminal knowledge have only become *more* valuable, not less. Think of it this way: do you want a manager with an MBA or one that's been an engineer?

[1] Apple is famous for blaming the user and not recognizing the design is bad. "People wouldn't buy it if it was bad". Well guys what? People won't buy it if it's bad AND there's another option. That's the variable that changed: options

So I expect that we will see more and more Linux VM’s. Maybe it will be like Sqlite, ubiquitous but hidden?

I dual booted Windows since 95, also tried Mac OSX on $job but nothing comes close to the peace of mind of using Linux.

I have lived through spotty hardware support (fixed), install editing too many files (fixed), no games (fixed) and several other problems, but even in the worst of times it is a software that respects you as a user.

The last one is a huge problem for Windows as well. Its due to Microsoft discontinuing support for S3 sleep mode, which in turn, caused motherboard manufacturers to discontinue S3 support in the BIOS. Which means its no longer available even if you install Linux on the laptop since it requires firmware support to work. You can still find laptops that support S3 sleep if you really look hard enough. Or buy a Mac.

It was worse than I imagined it would be. I now deeply regret giving this article a click.

Basically, it's all about how AI can use Mac OS features.

I think the author is actually on the right track at first then dismisses it with: These are "why a person did not switch to Linux last" and not "why the desktop, as an institution, will continue to belong to Apple and Microsoft". You can absolutely get to the root cause of the former and find foundational issues that explain the latter.