Now, for an actual sane take, unless we do the actual marketing work in order to gather interest from people, no, not even close to everyone will switch to Linux, specially considering Microsoft has literal millions of dollars to spend in marketing and will likely spin this in a way that non-techy people specially will buy in due to not knowing any choice.
This is a PSA begging people to contribute to their favorite distros not (only) with code but with marketing. Social media posts, videos, word of mouth recommendations, advocacy, events, etc. If your distro doesn’t have a marketing team, create one, as most projects should already have done two decades ago. If your distro has one (like we do in Fedora), join it. There’ll likely be something you can help with.
Do you have a minute to talk about our Lord and Savior, Patrick Volkerding?
Have you ever set up Arch with Secureboot, full disk encryption, Btrfs snapshots, NVidia drivers and multilib support and thought “man, I wish this was harder”? Then Slackware is the distro for you!
This is extreme copium, sorry to say. You have no idea how much shit the average person will eat to prevent having to learn something new. For someone who has never manually installed an OS before, even Windows, the idea of doing that with something like Linux and potentially deleting their existing OS is genuinely frightening. Never underestimate the fact that people will pay through the nose to ensure they don’t have to contend with the unknown.
I believe it when I see it. If the average Windows user is as dumb as the average Xitterer you’ll have to wait a century or two for the year of the Linux desktop.
Realistically, the year of the Linux desktop will come when Windows 12 enables WSL by default.
Or when desktop PCs die out and Android/SteamOS/ChromeOS devices take over the laptop market.
There is no “us” or “them”. If Microsoft will maintain its streak of spoiling everything they touch, everyone will switch to Linux sooner or later 😉
Now, for an actual sane take, unless we do the actual marketing work in order to gather interest from people, no, not even close to everyone will switch to Linux, specially considering Microsoft has literal millions of dollars to spend in marketing and will likely spin this in a way that non-techy people specially will buy in due to not knowing any choice.
This is a PSA begging people to contribute to their favorite distros not (only) with code but with marketing. Social media posts, videos, word of mouth recommendations, advocacy, events, etc. If your distro doesn’t have a marketing team, create one, as most projects should already have done two decades ago. If your distro has one (like we do in Fedora), join it. There’ll likely be something you can help with.
Okay, you’ve got a point 😅
Arch doesn’t need a marketing department. If someone uses Arch they’ll tell you.
@averagedrunk @joojmachine I use arch btw
Do you have a minute to talk about our Lord and Savior, Patrick Volkerding?
Have you ever set up Arch with Secureboot, full disk encryption, Btrfs snapshots, NVidia drivers and multilib support and thought “man, I wish this was harder”? Then Slackware is the distro for you!
This is suspiciously similar to the original pitch Torvalds made for Linux… I’m in!
That’s true. We’re just getting the window managers and drivers ready for everyone who will follow us.
This is extreme copium, sorry to say. You have no idea how much shit the average person will eat to prevent having to learn something new. For someone who has never manually installed an OS before, even Windows, the idea of doing that with something like Linux and potentially deleting their existing OS is genuinely frightening. Never underestimate the fact that people will pay through the nose to ensure they don’t have to contend with the unknown.
I believe it when I see it. If the average Windows user is as dumb as the average Xitterer you’ll have to wait a century or two for the year of the Linux desktop.
But but but 2023 is the year of Linux on the steam deck! 🎉
Realistically, the year of the Linux desktop will come when Windows 12 enables WSL by default.
Or when desktop PCs die out and Android/SteamOS/ChromeOS devices take over the laptop market.