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Posted Monday 27th May 2024
"Until recently, Linux seemed inaccessible to all but the most elite computer user - but new user interfaces and unprecidented compatibility has seen Linux become a major, viable alternative to Windows. I predict that, within five years, most people will use Linux on a daily basis."
I wrote those words in May 2007. Back then, Windows had 94% of the marketshare on desktop computers, with MacOS taking 4% and Linux 0.68%. Seventeen years later, did my preduction come true? Have we now, finally, got a more balanced playing field?
No. As of April 2024, Windows still has a 74% marketshare. MacOS takes second place with 14%, and Linux on the desktop has grown... to 3.8%. Hardly the swing to near-universal Linux adoption I had predicted as a Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) loving university senior. But why was I making predictions about desktop OS adoption whilst at university? It all came down to my final year project, something which has become increasingly relevant again recently.
I studied a weird hybrid degree that let me do a bit of Computer Science, a bit of Computer Animation, and a bit of Videography. It was still a BSc, so the technical content was heavy, but I was always interested in what computers could bring to the creative arts rather than just how software worked. Still am. When it came to the final year of my degree, I got free choice of a final project to create and then write a dissertation about. I could have picked anything - animation, software, a feature film, the scope was broad.
I chose to focus on two of the things I'd become most passionate about over the course of my studies: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and FOSS.
And so I set out to create a tool that could ease the migration of a Windows user to whatever distribution of Linux they chose. It was an ambitious project. In fact, I had to scale back the scope a little because there was more to do than I could feasably fit into a project that had a deadline and needed marking so I could get a degree from it. It was, however, a project I genuinely believed could play a huge part in building a much-needed bridge to cross a digital divide I didn't think should exist.
So I wrote a fairly basic set of data migration tools (that would make any security expert cry by modern standards) and a cool looking (for 2007) tutorial/help interface, and set about trying to do some user testing so I'd have something nice to write about for my dissertation. I couldn't wait - and imagined the excited faces of everyone I spoke to about what I'd built. After all, it was about bringing people together! Who wouldn't love that?
As it turns out, lots of people did not love that.
The compatibiliy with hardware was there (well, unless you had a winmodem), and if you picked a window manager that looked a bit Windows-esque, you could squint and get by. But there were 'creature comforts' that they'd got used to on Windows that weren't replicated. One tester said they missed Clippy in Office. Not even joking. Getting Windows users to say they'd actually switch was hard going because there was no incentive. No scandal big enough for them to care.
Oh well, I thought. At least the Linux user community would welcome this project so we could try and get some more users, right? Yeah, no. I was laughed out of a local user group meeting for suggesting it, and met with some pretty hostile reactions online. Which was harder to achieve in the days before social media. A lot of the people I spoke to saw Windows users as 'the enemy' and forever tainted by their association with a Microsoft product. As if somehow if they switched to Linux they'd infect the project with some strain of super-infectious capitalism.
The way we use computers has changed a lot in the last seventeen years. A lot of the work our devices do is centred around consuming rather than creating, and by far the biggest memory hog on most people's machines is the web broswer. Looking at you, Chromium. Hardware compatibility is far less of an issue than it ever has been - but software compatibility is still a fragmented mess. Between different platforms, CPU architectures, and competing standards, even getting applications to run on the same version of Windows can be hard.
Linux has enjoyed growth. I mean, 0.68% to 3.8% is nothing to sniff atm though it's a far cry from my prediction it'd be 'everywhere' by 2012. There are huge flagship projects using Linux, support for major games and platforms, and a degree of hardware ubiquity that we could only have dreamed of back in the early 00s. So surely with this growth the userbase has become wholly more supportive of newcomers. Right, reader? Right??
Oh dear.
I was chatting on the Fediverse the other day about helping people switch to Linux. I guess I'm consistent. As are Microsoft, who have recently decided to turn Windows into a dystopian nightmare OS. Again. So I predicted a rush of people looking for alternatives, and suggested that those of us who use Linux either full or part time extend as many olive branches as we can.
And just like 2007, one of the first responses I got made me shake my head:
"You do you, but why should I put myself out for people who never learned how to use a computer properly. Their own stupid fault."
Other than get privately educated and take the town of Swindon from obscurity to prosperity? He'd build a damn bridge, that's what he'd do, and get celebrated for doing so. Indeed, all of the people I've seen online talking about making it easy for users to switch to Linux have been celebrated far more than my project was back in 2007.
But for all of the celebratory voices there are just as many dissenting ones.
We're all in this together. The age of 'computer people' and 'other people' is over, and we're all intertwined in this strange, scary digital world where privacy is constantly being eroded and someone with a billion dollars can build something that hoovers up all your data and tells you to eat glue for the privilidge. Surely it's in ALL of our best interests to help one another out?
Whenever I chat to someone less technically experienced than me, I always check in with them on security. Do the use a password manager? Lock their screen? Have they considered switching away from an operating system that plans to screenshot their activity every few minutes? I wouldn't say it takes much time out of my day - but it might well help someone not become a victim, or lose acceess to their data, or become another pawn in a the great capitalism wars to come.
I know we all try not to think about the future too much, but there are scary things on the horizon. How and when this data-abusing madness will end isn't clear, and I have a sinking feeling that it'll get worse before it gets better. If that's the case, I hope we can come together as a community and welcome all of those who want to take shelter from the storm of LLMs, data theft, and poor security.
Let's be here for the absolute beginners, and keep them warm and dry while they learn the ropes. And who knows? Maybe 2025 will end up finally being the year of the Linux Desktop.
After my dissertation was handed in, I originally planned to keep developing the project. I didn't plan on going straight into a job, and I worked on a startup idea with a friend writing some open education software... that ended up with us both getting, ironically, hired by Microsoft. I stayed a vocal advocate of FOSS whilst there, and am still proud of some of the open source work I did whilst at the company. I never did pick back up Linux for Beginners, which sat languishing on an old (and I mean old, spinning disk PATA) hard drive until I recently uncovered it again. Below are a few photos for posterity.
Back of the CD case including cringeworthy 'marketing' words
──────────────────── Mood: Amused Music: Ana Ng - They Might Be Giants ────────────────────
