Linux adoption continues to grow!! Now at 6%

[mabian]

So that makes 6% after 30 yrs ime.

If I'm not mistaken it also makes almost 2 percent gained in less than five years.

Thank you for the very clever contribution to this thread

[audiojunkie]

So that makes 6% after 30 yrs ime.

No, it makes a 3% jump from 3% to 6% in 12 months time.

If you really wanted to get technical, Linux has dominated the enterprise world for a decade and a half. Most servers are Linux.

If you want to count the smartphone and tablet realm, then Android (yes, that’s Linux) has dominated for at least a decade. Sorry, but Apple’s products are not the leaders here.

If you want to talk the desktop realm, then ChromeOS should be counted, since it is Linux. I think it is stupid that it is counted as a separate product, just because it is branded by Google. If everything was counted properly, rather than separating branded versions, it approaches the same percentage as MacOS. And, no other OS is experiencing as rapid an amount of growth. In fact, the growth is coming from cutting into Windows’ percentage.

So yeah, if you want to get snarky about it, maybe it took a bit of time to get to where it is now, but if the rate of adoption continues at its current rate, Linux will be passing MacOS very soon.

[pekbro]

I just stated how it is ime, you guys are the only ones who are being snarky. Any snarkiness from
me was all in your head. Geeze…

[seismic1]

If you really wanted to get technical, Linux has dominated the enterprise world for a decade and a half. Most servers are Linux.

I should think this was the case for much longer than that. I was running Slackware at the office in '94. In the late '90s I was testing and comparing multiple distros. By 2000, the company I worked for had settled on RedHat and had it installed on thousands of machines globally. Our competitors were doing the same. We weren't just installing on servers. All of our parallel compute clusters were using RedHat (later Centos).

The top 500 supercomputer tables in 2000 indicated that many other businesses were following suit.

[uOpt]

The reasons for the spike are Valve's version of Wine, which runs many games, and the fact that Linux is running those games faster than Windows most of the time. "Faster" is a magic word for many.

Wayland needs to die in a fire.

[audiojunkie]

The reasons for the spike are Valve's version of Wine, which runs many games, and the fact that Linux is running those games faster than Windows most of the time. "Faster" is a magic word for many.

Wayland needs to die in a fire.

That is "a" reason, but not the only reason.

I know that you know about the things I'm about to say--I'm mentioning it for those who don't know:

It is a fact that Linux has become so much more friendly and accessible and is able to do so much more than just a short 5 years ago. Look at the all the achievements that just Linux audio alone has had in this short period. Linux has been getting better in all areas:

At first, there was only JACK. There were no plugins and no plugin support. There was only Ardour and a handful of other tools.

* Reaper came
* LV2 came
* VST came
* VST3 came
* kernel boot parameters for low latency were introduced
* realtime kernel patches were mainlined into the generic kernel
* CLAP came
* Pipewire came
* linVST came
* yabridge came
* numerous companies and independent developers started creating more plugins
* people in KVRAudio started to accept that Linux was viable for realtime audio work and started taking Linux seriously.
* the number of KVRAudio linux users has grown tremendously
* NTSync is almost complete in WINE, which will reduce CPU usage of Windows apps running under Linux greatly
* There are now ways to run Windows in a VM just about as fast as in WINE, and that means that no Windows applications are outside of the realm of being used in a Linux DAW on one machine.

I know that I am missing a bunch..... PWAR, WINEASIO, QPWGraph, several GUI pipewire configurator tools, Audiogridder, MIDI 2.0, and much much more that I'm not remembering at the moment. All of this stuff has happened in the last 5 years, or not much more than 5 years.

And yes, we have a lot to than Valve and gamers for as well.

In my personal opinion, Linux is the best OS out there. It's the only OS used on supercomputers. It dominates in the field of IoT and embedded computers, automobiles, robotics, and even space exploration. It's even what powers the Mars rover equipment. Do you know what that means? Linux is the best OS on two planets!! Hahaha!! No other OS can claim to even be on Mars yet!

[uOpt]

No doubt about any of that.

Some obstacles remain. For example the realtime code path in the kernel isn't used in many (any?) distributions yet. One problem with it is that the binary NVidia drivers don't work with it.

[audiojunkie]

No doubt about any of that.

Some obstacles remain. For example the realtime code path in the kernel isn't used in many (any?) distributions yet. One problem with it is that the binary NVidia drivers don't work with it.

I’ve been using it in Fedora since it was released. I’m pretty certain that Ubuntu and its derivatives are using it too.

As for Nvidia, that problem was Nvidia’s fault. They refused for years to open up their proprietary system because they didn’t want to share their trade secrets. That’s their prerogative. The solution has been simple—buy a different video card. AMD has a nice selection. But the good news is that NVidia finally changed its mind, and open sourced the core of their drivers a couple of years ago, and they are available now. I personally don’t use Nvidia products in my setup. But even that is getting better.

So, yes. There are things that could be better. But, it will always be the case. New technologies, new developments, new ideas on improving the status quo —to quote a lyric: “discontentment is our engine.”

[NWSM]

Well the market is kinda small, but WHY can u-he porting or build his Plugins for Linux and its working very well?

What is that LIST of Issues that makes porting Plugins to Linux complicated?

1. Full windows API call is one of them
2. Linux Kernel contains no Graphic Codes Stuff, Windows seems to have that
3. A lot of Linux Distro's, the most are Debian based (if you can use glibc u-he plugin will run)
4. Build the Plugin in CLAP format - i don't know how this works, but CLAP seems just better. Why can Devs not just build CLAP Plugins for Linux?
5. The Market is too small to make effort, they don't care the little ones
6. Missing Knowledge

[FigBug]

I make free/open source plugins for a hobby and commercial plugins as a job. Looking at my latest free synth, 1.15% of my downloads are for Linux. I support Linux because with JUCE it's pretty easy, GitHub Actions provides the build machines. I don't test on Linux, the plugins are "as is", if you have a problem with them, open a pull request.

For commercial plugins, it's a harder case to make. Customers won't accept "as is". The plugins need to be tested, supported. It adds a lot of overhead. Even more now as Linux users expect both intel and arm builds. The opportunity cost just isn't worth it for a maybe 1% - 2% increase in sales.